Take this employer-based health coverage and shove it

One much-neglected goal of healh care reform is to free people from jobs they’d like to quit by decoupling employment from health care coverage.

One goal of health care reform is to improve health. Health care reform probably isn’t the best way to do that, since health depends far more on lifestyle and environmental conditions than it does on health care.

A second goal of health care reform is to avoid the situation in which illness spells financial ruin. That’s not less important, and more achievable.

A third goal, much neglected, is to end the situation in which people are bound to their jobs because they can’t afford to lose their employer-linked health insurance.

Sen. Ron Wyden offers a very funny video that illustrates that third point quite nicely.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com