Healthy Future US Blog

We meet them all the time:  people trapped in their job, in order to keep their health benefits.   We need a study on the negative impact on entrepreneurship and the economy from people health-handcuffed to their current jobs.  From my limited anecdoctal evidence, the costs are astronomical.   Two-income families have made the labor market much more geographically immobile, and now health insurance is exacerbating the job-jail. Modern Healthcare just summarized results of a new Peterson-Kaiser study  on employer health insurance and the actual cost to employee families, of the combination of employee share of premiums plus employee out-of-pocket health costs. Employers keep shifting more and more health costs to employees. The only good news is that employers are still paying a (fast-shrinking) % of premiums--so health costs are still cheaper than being self-employed.  [Also, if we end up back in the uncovered pre-existing conditions bad-old-days again, expensive employer heal