Lose Your Job, Keep Your Healthcare

One cannot go a day without hearing more troubling news regarding unemployment and job cuts in the United States.  The percentages and numbers we hear are troubling, but they also seem to dehumanize the difficulty individuals face when they lose their job and what often goes along with it – their healthcare.  Today the argument has never been stronger for dismantling employer-sponsored healthcare. As employers themselves struggle under mounting healthcare costs, we must recognize that one’s access to healthcare should not be determined by the status of their employment.   

Last year alone the United States lost 2.589 million jobs, the most since the end of the Second World War.  There is little doubt that many of these jobs were the source of healthcare for nearly 3 million Americans and their families.  There is little need for a reminder of the financial as well as emotional stress that accompany being laid off, but the government can do a great deal to alleviate this stress by introducing policy that protects the healthcare status of Americans. 

In the short-run, President Obama plans to make it easier for Americans to access affordable healthcare in the event of losing their jobs.  Currently there are proposals to provide funding to the states to expand emergency Medicaid rolls as well as regarding the use of federal funds to subsidize and extend COBRA plans.  Currently the COBRA program allows Americans who lose their job to keep their employer benefits, but only if they want to pay full price for them.

Clearly, the Obama administration is demonstrating a willingness to use federal funding as means to expand the healthcare safety net amidst the economic downturn, but the implications for the long term remain unclear as to how we deal with structural issues in our employer based system.  We are all becoming aware of how the rising cost of healthcare is putting fiscal stress on American employers big and small but here are other issues at hand as well.  In a 21^st century economy where a highly mobile and fluid workforce is increasingly becoming the norm, should our health insurance be not equally as portable?  Should our healthcare destinies be forever tied to the resources and faculties of our employers?

Having the government fill in the gaps left by an economic crisis and our fragmented healthcare system may be what is necessary today, but it should only be viewed as a temporary solution to a long festering problem.  Employers today are becoming more and more reluctant to offer benefits and with the availability of jobs drying up, new college graduates are especially vulnerable to joining the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.  It is not a sustainable solution for the government to simply foot the bill for the current system deficiencies.  We need profound, long-term reform that structurally harmonizes healthcare costs and quality though mechanisms such as transparency, IT and wellness/prevention.  But above all, we need a system that ensures us once we leave or lose our jobs that we have not lost everything else.