Health Care

I'm lucky to have good health care where I work, at least for now. If I were to change jobs, however, I would have to pay my own insurance premiums for 3 months under the COBRA law, which would be exorbitantly expensive, and then there would be the possibility that my next job-provided health insurance would deny me coverage based on a "pre-existing condition." (If I were to be fired, I'd be totally screwed.) Thus I have a good incentive to stay at my present job, even though I might feel I could make better money elsewhere and put my abilities to better use (for the ultimate benefit of the U.S. economy). So, in my case and I suspect in the case of many others, the current health-care delivery system in the U.S. is essentially bad for business when people are not free to live up to their full potential out of fear of losing their health care benefits.

I just read this article about the health care mess in Massachusetts. I for one think all Americans should be in the same health-care pool, thereby spreading the risk over the entire country, and if necessary get insurance companies out of the health-care business. The reason why health care in this country is so limited and so expensive is that too many people (too many bureaucracies and CEOs) are making a killing off it. It's immoral.