You Do Not Have Health Insurance

I wanted very quickly--it's hard sometimes to keep from posting more than once a day, and I've got work to do -- to direct you to this argument at The Baseline Scenario, which does a better job than I could of showing what a long, arduous road it can be from the day you pay your insurance premium to the day you are reimbursed for health care.

He hits the nail on the head when he points out that "as long as your health insurance depends on your job, your health is only insured insofar as your job is insured – and your job isn’t insured." Employer-based health care has some positives -- for one thing, our employers are likely to be organizations large enough to negotiate professionally with insurers -- but it shouldn't be the only game in town.

It just takes a minute to imagine what your life would be like if you got too sick to work. Try it now: if you can't work, how can you get insurance? Without insurance, how are you going to get medical care? Without medical care, how can you get back to work?