I’ve heard several friends from the US say the exact quote in the title of this thread. The first time I heard it I was shocked, because it was a totally new concept to me. But it apparently seems normal for Americans.
I’m curious to know:
how widespread a phenomena is it? (anecdotal evidence is welcome, since there probably isn’t any hard data)
do people who work only for the health benefits feel that it is unfair?
Most people see their salary as a mark of pride and measure of satisfaction in their career, and expect to earn more as they gain experience, etc. If you are working for the health benefits only, do you care less about getting pay raises?
Have you chosen to be locked into one job for the rest of your life because you need the health insurance there? But what happens if a new boss makes things miserable for you, or you want to move to a new city, or for whatever reason decide you want a new job.?
(For comparison:
I live in a country with semi-socialized medicine,provided by private HMO’s which all provide the same set of medical services, free to everyone. Everybody pays equally-(6% health tax on top of their income tax), and gets equal coverage.
(disadvantages: Yes, sometimes their are 2-month waits for services; yes, the hospital rooms are crowded (2 or 4 beds per room); And no, I don’t get to choose my own doctor. ) But— I am free to switch jobs if I want and tell my boss to go to hell tomorrow morning. I could get quit my career and become a part-time janitor, but I’ll still get free heart surgery if I need it. )
My SO works with a couple of women who don’t need the money because their husbands make a handsome income. They state that they work so, 1. they have something to do. 2. for the investments (401k and the like) and 3. for the insurance.
I’ve also worked with a few people in the past, usually older but not quite eligible for medicare who worked for the insurance benefits because they didn’t qualify health-wise for an individual policy. (there are no health questions in business health insurance plans)
I don’t think it’s a very common thing, but it seems that most people that ‘work because of the insurance’ do it for health reasons or because they can’t afford individual plans.
I think there’s a translation problem here. No one is receiving *only *health insurance in exchange for work. What they mean is that the health coverage is more valuable, subjectively (and perhaps monetarily) than the salary that they receive.
In America, you can either get health insurance through an employer (although not all of them offer it) or by buying a policy privately. If it’s through an employer, the employer pays for the majority of the cost of the policy. You only have a small bit taken out of your paycheck to cover your portion. Also, because they are offering a group of policies, the insurance companies sell them cheaper - it’s just an economy of sale. So a big company may have 500 insurance policies at, say 300 a month each. They pay $250 of it, and each employee has $50 a month taken out of their salary to cover the rest.
A private policy, OTOH, is something you have to pay for totally by yourself, and is usually more expensive than a group policy. Private coverage for my family of four is over $450 a month, and no one is paying any portion of that. That the cheapest decent coverage we can find, and it’s only so cheap because we have a $2500 annual deductible - on top of that $450 a month, we have to pay $2500 of our own medical bills before the insurance covers anything. A lower deductible means higher monthly payments.
So if you can find a job that provides health insurance, it’s often like automatically getting an extra few hundred in pay each month. That may make it more attractive than a higher paid job elsewhere without insurance.
Purely anecdotal story, but one that supports your OP.
My 50-ish Mother-in-law is recently divorced. She’s your typical older generation woman. Stayed home to raise two kids while her husband worked, so never finished college, or really got into a career field. Did start to work at Burger King about 15 years ago to provide some additional income to the family when her husband lost his job, and bills were tight. When she got divorced, and lost the health care coverage from her husband, it turned out that because she has some pre-existing conditions, independant health care coverage would cost her about $600 a month. So she got a job that provided health care at only $250 a month. Considering that the money she was earning was less than $1000 a month, and with her savings that I know she has, she didn’t really have to work for the money, but to pay for the health care at a reduced cost. Screwed up as all get out…but true.
As for being locked into a job for life? Eh…I work so that I can enjoy the home I go to at the end of the day…and be able to do the things that my salary allows me to do. Not because I like the job…in fact while I’m ambivilant about this particular job I’m in at the moment, the last one I had I hated every day I went to it. But I got to come home to something better that my job paid for. YMMV.
I don’t think “working for the health coverage” necessarily ties one to a particular job, although it does tie them to working full-time for an organization that has good health benefits. In my family’s instance, I work mostly for the coverage, although my salary isn’t too bad either. My husband, when he worked the basic 9-5, had worse coverage for more money than I did. Now he is an independent contractor and has no health benefits at all, so it is up to me to carry them. However, if I hated this job, I would try to find another one that had reasonable health benefits.
If what you’re really asking is, doesn’t it suck not to have national health care, then my answer would be yeah, I guess so, but I’ve never had that so I can’t say for sure.
If they’re married and their husbands work, they should be covered as dependants on their husbands’ policies. I’m guessing reason 3 is just a convenient excuse for reasons 1 and 2.
I believe in a couple of those cases the husbands work on a contract basis so are not provided any coverage. And at least one gets the coverage for less than than their husbands job offers.
I’m 33, and I have a chronic condition that affects around 1 in 5 men over 20. I typically utilize well over 20K of healthcare services in any given year. Yeah, that’s not as much as my salary, but if I had to, I’d work for the health benefits alone. That’s no smalll chunk of change.
Right. I’m a stay at home mother and our health insurance is through my husband’s job. His company pays 100% of his and only a portion of ours. When my youngest goes to school in a few years, I’m going to go back to work with one of the primary goals being to get my own health insurance that’s covered (at least more than it is now) by the company I work for.
Usually, but not always. My husband was job hunting last year and one of the places he was considering offered medical to employees only, not spouses or dependants, even if they did not have other coverage. I am afraid it will become more common.
I do know of many companies that will refuse coverage to spouses and dependants if they have other means of coverage. That is, if my employer offers me coverage through my job I cannot use my husband’s insurance. It used to be that you could choose the better plan, or even have both (I remember the days of dual coverage! How nice that was!) but it is getting less and less common, at least around here.
I am good friends with 2 couples whose wives chose their jobs primarily for the insurance, their husbands are both self-employed. When you are starting out a small business the insurance payments can be really tough. I think more people would try to work for themselves if they didn’t have to worry about medical insurance.
I recently learned that my mom is getting health insurance at her own job only within the last year, because my father’s company changed their policy to “if the spouse works at a place that offers comparable health insurance, they have to be insured through their place of work unless petiotioned and approved”.
That is complete crap if that starts happening. That would make so many families who want to have one parent stay home and could otherwise swing it financially, end up putting their kids in daycare. It would be one thing if it was easier to get private health insurance, but often those policies are prohibitively expensive or outright denied. I can’t get health insurance on my own (DENIED!) because I have lupus…even though it’s been in remission for 15 years and I haven’t had any treatments, medications, or even doctors visits related to it. If my husband couldn’t get dependent health insurance through his job, we’d be forced to put our kids in daycare or I’d just have to wing it without medical coverage. This would be just one more area where pursuit of profits would undermine society, in my very humble opinion.
We could manage without one of us having a full-time job (I have two pensions and a part-time job, no mortgage), but if we had to pay for medical insurance, we couldn’t. So my husband will work full-time until he’s 65. So yeah, he’s working for the insurance.
Many people at the last place I worked said they were working full-time just for the insurance. Some had spouses with health problems, and some were afraid to retire or go part-time because they couldn’t afford private insurance.
I felt a bit guilty after watching the Comptroller General on 60 Minutes last week. We’re Baby Boomers who will be adding to the Social Security/Medicare crisis in a few years.
I don’t really understand this. It isn’t offered at all even if you pay for it? My company doesn’t offer to PAY for families but they do offer it. I pay over $800 per month to cover my (soon to be ex) spouse and children and that is with the company paying 100% of my personal premium. I think that is pretty much the norm now. The employer covers the employee and the employee pays additional for the family.
The advantage of company policies is that have to take everyone. I couldn’t get private insurance for my bipolar diagnosised spouse but the company policy had to take him.
My sister was one of those “work for the insurance” folks. She and her husband had managed to save and had a large investment portfolio. He retired from the military and didn’t work. He was covered through the VA, but she and their daughter weren’t. She always said she’d push the mail cart as long as they offered insurance. In the end she worked her way from Admin Asst to manager of International transportation (handling the shipping of imported stuff to sell) for a large retail chain. They’d offer her raises and she wouldn’t be exactly sure how much she was making at the time, because it all was directly deposited into their mutual funds accounts. it was more important to her that she enjoy what she did and that it kept her challenged. And that she had insurance instead of paying for it out of pocket.
I did it for a few years. After 15 years, the software company I worked for went kaput, so I took a wage slave job at a bookstore. I did it for three reasons: it was impossible to find anything in my field in the Seattle area, I love bookstores (and managed one years ago) and the health insurance was fantastic.
I knew what I was getting into and didn’t think it was unfair. I eventually left though, after transferring to another store (in another part of the country) that I seriously did not love.
No regrets, but I do miss the insurance. We’re forking over a gruntload of money for private coverage now. You know, if I could find a store that is as much fun to work for as the one I left in Washington, I’d do it again – for bupkis wages but decent health insurance, that is.
One case I am familiar with: a man who is a self-employed executive-level marketing consultant, whose wife works as a teacher’s aide in the local public school, because one of their three children is essentially uninsurable on the private market due to a pre-existing condition.
Not true- my sister carries the insurance because her husband is self-employed and it would be much more expensive for him to provide it. In my case, my benefits are much better (as a state employee) and cheaper than what my husband could get that once I went back full time I carried the insurance.
You know how some people say that you can’t put a price on your sanity? I can on mine. It’s about $14,000/year uninsured. And that doesn’t even cover counseling/therapy; I get that for free. Insured? It’s $2,400, and that includes my pre-tax premiums that I’d have to pay anyway.
I can not go uninsured. Uh-uh, no way, no how. And I don’t know that I could get private coverage that would cover that condition. So, yeah, unless we somehow magically win tonight’s Lotto jackpot, one of us is going to be working for the insurance. We’d be guaranteed to at least “earn” $11,000.