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Hidden Gender Dependency: Men Provide Most of the Employer-Based Healthcare

Thu, 2009-07-09 07:11 — figleaf

Dana Goldstein points to an awful variation of the better-known problem of people keeping an unproductive or unsatisfying job because they can’t afford to lose employer-provided healthcare:

While men are more likely than women to be uninsured, women’s health coverage is more volatile. Why? Because only 38 percent of women have health coverage through their own job, compared to 50 percent of men. That means women are about twice as likely as men to depend on a spouse or partner’s employer-provided health plan. The negative outcomes here are pretty obvious: For an American woman, the end of a romantic relationship is often not just emotionally tumultuous but medically tumultuous as well, for both herself and her children.

She said it here.

Another really important reason to support healthcare reform.

Thu, 2009-07-09 15:00 — 3052 (not verified) #permalink

I said something to this tune already over at Dana’s place. But the solution can’t be a patchwork like she describes (though that may be all we can hope for, politically, right now) – massaging the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, etc. Ultimately health care has to be decoupled from employment status. That’s the only way to ensure full inclusion of women, minorities, the very old, and the very young. For that matter, it’s the only way relatively privileged pale males won’t get left out in the cold when they become seriously ill.

Also, it’s not just the end of a relationship (e.g., divorce) that’s a problem. So is widowhood, be it early or late. (I’ve faced down both.) And so is the pressure to stay in a relationship because it’s not just your own insurance, but also your kids’, that hinges on the marriage surviving.

The only way to protect women and other vulnerable groups against the vicissitudes of the labor market – and to ensure health care is a human right rather than a perq of employment – is to move toward a single-payer system.

I’ll hop of my socialist soapbox now. But others are welcome to join me up there; the air may be thin, but it’s sure heady. :-)

Thu, 2009-07-09 17:16 — 3052 (not verified) #permalink

And if you or a dependent has a chronic condition, and your insurance is employment-based, then the American insurance companies just love it when you quit or get fired. Next time you get insurance, your condition is now pre-existing so they don’t have to cover it.

American health insurance is dysfunctional on just about every level possible. (The only level where it’s not: profitability.) And now they’re claiming congress should deny people better solutions because it will put them out of business. Well, duh.

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