Hacker News Reader

Comment by minikites | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think so many US businesses fight against universal healthcare? Employers want every possible measure of control over their employees that they can get.

View on HN

I never thought about it like this. This makes a lot of sense and is blowing my mind. I've worked at the same company for the last 16 years partly because of fear of losing healthcare.

If you're receptive to that way of thinking, try taking a look into Marxist theories, which incorporate that way of thinking into a political philosophy.

Have a look at my 2nd earliest submission about full employment and the consequences it would bring, it's pretty refreshing reading.

Come and live in a country where healthcare is not tied to your job in any remote way, and see how differently people behave. It really is night and day.

When my brother came back to Australia after 5 years away he said the biggest thing he noticed was not driving on the wrong side of the road, not the weather, not the food, not the accents - it was how people are treated at their jobs.

Even in Canada though, Dental is pretty much tied to your job. It's not as significant, but I've only ever had legitimate dental coverage during school and for 3 months over the course of a decade.

So move to a country where even Dental isn't tied to your job!

I'm working on it alright! Although technically it's not tied to your job, just not very affordable unless it's on a company plan. I figure this is the common definition of "tied to job", because I can't imagine a system that provides exclusive access to dental insurance to employers only.

I haven't had dental insurance for longer than 3 months in my 11 years as an adult because I haven't managed to stay employed longer at a company that would put me on the plan. Actually typing that out evokes a unique sense of sadness that I haven't had in a while.

I read a horrifying description by a American of their employment and health insurance situation.

Some details I don't understand, and I may be misremembering, but the gist was:

- they were (under?)-employed within their field, at an okay job

- they had health benefits

- they had had a major health condition which caused them to now have a pre-existing condition (cancer? I don't recall.)

- they were now in a situation where-in if they lost their job, or COBRA coverage for 2+ months, they lapsed out of their existing policy

- they would then have to apply for health insurance coverage with a "pre-existing condition" which would not be covered (by the normal policies?)

So now they were very clearly and palpably tied to their health insurance and by extension to the company that employed them, and felt very uneasy about going through the hiring / probation period somewhere else.

I may have the major details wrong there, feel free to correct me if I do.

Absolutely true in my opinion. The cost of procuring and administering healthcare is one of the largest non-productive costs to most businesses. Its about retention and control.

There's a similar ugly dynamic at work with H1Bs, particularly in tech.

It's very ugly in graduate schools too, for grad students and postdoctoral researchers who aren't paid much better (salary is maybe 40-50k). In many west coast cities, rents over the past decade have gone up like 60%. Graduate student stipends on the other hand, have heald pretty steady around 30k during that entire time. These are people with a bachelors or even a masters degree, working on things like disease, being paid less from a government grant than a McDonalds worker in Fresno. Oh, but it's "training," so working for less than minimum wage is seen as OK. It also doesn't help that any professor who hears of the 30k stipend goes "Golly, back in my day decades ago when rents were a full order of magnitude lower, I only made half that!" without any realization of the words coming out of their mouth.

I don't think it's true at all that businesses are against universal healthcare. Businesses want very much to have nothing to with providing employee healthcare, thus the opposition to Obamacare.

But if someone offered to take it off their plate, absent proportionately higher taxes, I cannot see any business outcry.

Big businesses with younger, white collar employees certainly gain a competitive advantage by getting a tax benefit for paying people via health insurance subsidies. Their risk pool is healthier, so the healthcare costs are lower, hence premiums are lower. Plus, obfuscated pricing always benefits the seller. The employer can lower the value of the benefit without the employee being able to accurately compare the costs to alternatives.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com