"Slackers," Health Coverage, and Open Relationships

Recently, news outlets like USA Today widely reported that 2.5 million new young adults now have health insurance attributable to PPACA. Hooray! That is wonderful news, right? Well, think again. From another perspective, it is not exactly cause for celebration. I came across an interesting blog entry written by Professor and Dean Vickie J. Williams of Gonzaga Law who stated that this need to be on parents' health insurance plans is "not a sign of a robust private insurance market." Instead, it really, "highlights the continued stagnation of the job market."  Great, more proof of a morbid job market. 


Additionally, she poses the idea that we as a society should sever the relationship between work and health insurance. I hadn't before seriously thought about such a concept since health insurance had been so intimately linked to employment my entire life. This monogamous marriage just turned into an open relationship. Consider.mind.blown. But it is nonsense to think that those who do not have a traditional job are "slackers" or somehow unworthy of health insurance. Professor Williams believes that the dependency of health insurance on employment stifles job freedom, risk-taking, innovation and creative productivity. Are we holding back a generation? Why do we have the system set up the way it is anyway? She traces the outdated employer health insurance model back to the WWII era -- a period when folks worked at the same company until retirement (basically ancient history...does that even exist today?) and employers received serious tax benefits. 


Times have really changed. So should health coverage.