For those who support employer-sponsored insurance and forcing employers to do it, e.g., via Colorado Ballot Initiative 92 (“Employer Responsibility for Health Insurance”), consider this: employer-sponsored insurance interferes with what jobs we choose and our choice to get married. These are rather significant parts of our lives, which we should choose for reasons other than medical insurance.
According to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation published in April:
- Almost one in five people “decided to stay in one job, rather than take another, mainly because the job you held at the time offered better health care benefits.”
- About 12% “Decided to take a different job, rather than stay at a job, mainly because the new job offered better health care benefits.”
- One in twenty “decided to get married, mainly to have access to your spouse’s health care benefits.”
The first two are an example of insurance job lock, and is yet another compelling reason to eliminate the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance. Elimining this would also encourage more people to get individual plans, which would make them less likely to marry for insurance reasons.
(Via The Inclusionist. Paul Hsieh and Lin Zinser also site the job lock here.)
