Workers, he says, are increasingly shackled to their jobs for no reason other than to cling to their employers’ health insurance coverage. These are people, he says, “who don’t leave a job even though they’re unhappy and would be more productive somewhere else.”
This is one of the many problems with the existing health care system in the USA. That system now costs 16% of USA GDP - the highest cost anywhere.
After a decade of working in a job she wanted to leave, Holmes Johnson found the courage to move on. “Starting my own thing was too overwhelming, and my husband’s plan did not offer the coverage to make us feel secure,” she says. A few months ago, she landed a public-relations position with a comparable salary at Washington law firm Sterne Kessler Goldstein Fox. After checking the firm’s formula for prescription-drug coverage, she made the jump. In what other country, she wonders, would that be the deciding factor?
The USA economy has strengths and weaknesses. The strengths have allowed the health care system to function poorly and still be tolerated. It has reached a point where it cannot be tolerated in its current form.
Related: Starbucks: Respect for Workers and Health Care - Health Care Crisis