I still have my healthcare . . . until I don't have it

Perhaps it seems unnecessary to be fixated on my health insurance when I’m employed, but I don’t think it is. Especially in today’s economy, when any employee at any level of a given firm should fear the extensive and undiminished effects of the recession, healthcare should be at the forefront of people’s minds.

And it is, for the most part, but it’s hard to believe that after reading stories like that told in Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed of the weekend in the NYTimes, The Body Count at Home, that it isn’t a priority for everyone as well. The character in Kristof’s piece (see the Online Reading List, or click on this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1) eventually loses her life to Lupus- a manageable and treatable disease- because when she lost her job she could not get new care with a preexisting condition.

Now, I don’t have a preexisting condition, but Kristof’s protagonist reminds me how undependable healthcare can be when you are unemployed, and makes me think about the stability of health care in my life. What if I’m laid off? Will I be able to find and afford a new plan? Can I fill my prescriptions? Will I keep my doctors? And I take it a step further: does having employer based healthcare scare people into staying at their jobs? Does our system therefore inhibit entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity? I believe it absolutely does. If you are someone who has gained great experience and insight from your first job, but may want to break out on your own, will you decline to go through with it because you need to keep going to the eye doctor to order contacts? Probably. You’ll at least think twice or three times about what new ideas are worth to you relative to the sensation of safety provided by a dependable healthcare plan.