Universal health care would be a boon to the free market

[RedEarth]

Economists and business leaders talk about a phenomenon called ”job lock,” when a person stays in a job primarily due to its attendant health benefits. Maybe they’re stuck because one of their children has a pre-existing condition that won’t be covered right away by a different insurer. Maybe it’s because they take expensive prescription drugs that may not be on the formulary of another employer’s plan.

Whatever the reason, this tethering of an employee to his job reduces job mobility by about 25 percent, says Brigitte Madrian, professor of public policy and corporate management at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

”The economic cost of job lock is that individuals do not move to jobs where they could be more productive,” Madrian says. ”Job change is part of the engine of economic growth.”
In a Business Week article earlier this year, Kelly Services Inc. chief executive Carl Camden echoed Madrian’s sentiments, saying that, increasingly, people ”don’t leave a job even though they’re unhappy and would be more productive somewhere else” because they feel they have to cling to their employer’s health coverage.

”Nobody worries when they leave one job to go to the next that their Social Security will be interrupted,” Camden told Business Week.

And then there is the entrepreneurial energy that would be unleashed if people felt free to leave their big company jobs in order to invest in their own ideas. A recent study conducted by Philip DeCicca, an assistant professor of economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, suggests that there is pent-up entrepreneurialism in the U.S. that is being held back by the prohibitive cost and unavailability of individual health coverage.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/november/universal_health_car.php

[madrchsod]

1. hell i`ve known that for a long time

my wife and i had a decent window fashion/upholstery business but there no way we could really devote our time because we had three kids that needed insurance.there was no way we could devote the time needed because we had to work..still pisses me off today because we were doing well for even part time.

[Lisa]

2. a Canadian weighing in here ... I've spoken with several local businesses ...

.... and I mean the small ones with 3-9 employees, that seem to be doing most of the heavy lifting these days, regardless of what Wal-Mart or General Motors might say. These range from bookstores to craft places to office supplies/services, and even an oyster farm. And they've told me that they couldn't afford to operate, or at least would have to start firing people, if they had to worry about health care costs for their workers. They might not be rushing to vote for leftist parties, but (perhaps even more significant) they see this as a non-partisan issue, and expect any government, regardless of party affiliation, to support our medicare system.