Health Effects of Job Insecurity | Hacker News Reader

Health Effects of Job Insecurity

wol.iza.org

78 pointsjoeyespo32 comments

At least in the US, one of the primary reasons job insecurity causes severe stress is that affordable health insurance that has reasonable coverage is usually only possible through employment. The moment you lose your job and your COBRA period runs out, you're at severe risk of financial catastrophe — the stress from which can lead to further health problems!

This is why I strongly support Medicare For All. Massive cost savings at the national level aside, it's a critical part of the equation for regaining our collective sanity. Where I come from we have a saying: good health is the greatest treasure. It's a prerequisite for achieving success and happiness. Therefore we need a system where people don't constantly worry about crazy medical bills, and don't forego basic practices like regular doctor visits because they can't afford the co-pays.

Single-payer is one option, but for those of us who don't trust the US federal government to do it right, there is another option.

There are three main reasons employer-provided insurance is so popular:

- The ACA failed Americans by resulting in drastically higher insurance plan prices - The ACA requires employers to provide health insurance - A dollar spent by your employer on health insurance is not subject to payroll taxes, but individual plans are

Additionally, a secondary effect of employers covering the insurance costs of their employees is that insurance is not subject to individual pricing pressure, since most people don't even know the cost of their insurance.

To fix this, I propose the following:

- Roll back the ACA, allow those with preexisting conditions to use medicare or medicaid instead - Provide tax benefits to people purchasing personal healthcare plans - Provide tax incentives for employers to transfer their company coverage to the individual employees

Translation, private companies make Bank and dump the unhealthy on taxpayers.

>>but for those of us who don't trust the US federal government to do it right

Why do you not trust them to do it right? Both Medicare and VA Health Care are run pretty well and are extremely popular amongst their recipients.

I'm not clear what people with pre-existing conditions should do if they don't trust the federal government to do it right.

The mandate to for health insurers to pay for healthcare for people with pre-existing conditions caused higher health insurance premiums.

If you want to pay for it with medicare or medicaid, then taxes will go up instead of health insurance premiums.

There's no free lunch, and there's nothing wrong with ACA other than not forcing everyone onto healthcare.gov and eliminating employers from the healthcare equation altogether. That, or just provide healthcare for everyone via taxes. Either way, taxes/health insurance premiums, the cost is going to be borne by everyone one way or the other.

How many people both have a pre-existing condition and can afford insurance on the private market? If you are part of a group insurance plan through a company, they have always been required to accept people with pre-existing conditions at the same price.

The group’s total price, and hence per member price, would go up, at least for the following year. There is no scenario where people can use more healthcare and pay lease. The only solution is to spread it out over more people.

The only way to lower per member price is to have lower total costs, which means restricting your pool of members to healthier lives, which nicely coincide with cushy white collar jobs that can afford to offer benefits.

That’s true. But it has nothing to do with the ACA as the parent post claims. Insurance companies have never been allowed to exclude people who are eligible under their group plan.

My issue with the parent post was that I interpreted it as claiming the ACA causing health insurance premiums to rise, to which I wanted to point out that any legislation that would have resulted in more people getting healthcare would have resulted in either higher insurance premiums or taxes. Therefore it’s moot to complain that ACA caused one’s health insurance premiums to rise.

The only way to provide more healthcare for cheaper is to increase the supply of labor, I.e. doctors and medicines.

Where I’m from, there is a phrase that just says, “health is wealth”, and my parents, uncles, and aunts use it all the time nowadays (though it could just be that I wasn’t paying attention to them mentioning it when I was younger).

The moment you lose your job and your COBRA period runs out, you're at severe risk of financial catastrophe — the stress from which can lead to further health problems!

It’s even worse. If you lose your job and the company you were insured through goes out of business, you no longer have a plan to buy into.

That almost happen to me in 2012. The company I was working for was on the rocks, it got acquired, and they laid everyone off. That by itself was no big deal. I had a contract lined up with one of our former customers the following week.

I went to get private insurance and found out that I couldn’t get any because of what I thought was a minor “condition” - even though I was a part time fitness instructor, had just run two half marathons, and could pass any of the military fitness tests for my age.

No problem, I thought. I still could get COBRA. Then the acquiring company cancelled the insurance plan - no more COBRA.

I was engaged, and my now wife suggested we moved the wedding date up so I could get on her insurance.

We said never again. She got a job with the school system and we are guaranteed access to insurance for the rest of her life after she has been working there for ten years.

It's a huge concern for someone who's been a temporary worker for 17 years. My performance is usually in the top 3-5% but if I get laid off, I've to find a job in less than 60 days or go back to my home country which means I can never make any long-term decisions. Should I buy a house? Hmm maybe not since I might have to sell it when market conditions are not right. How should I invest my money? Keep everything in cash or invest in the stock market. I'm sure this is true for every single employee on a H1-B working for FAANG companies and patiently waiting for 10+ years. Now, the new immigration plan is going to not take those waiting in line into consideration and is instead going to make everyone wait in line again.

I know a lot of people having the same problem. They make a tonne of money by contributing to some of the best companies in the world. But they don't have basic things like a house or a sofa or a dining table. Most even lease cars for a few years, instead of buying them. All their belongings are such that they can fit in a few carry on bags in case they have to urgently leave the US.

> if I get laid off, I've to find a job in less than 60 days or go back to my home country

There's a silver lining to it. I've written about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19858133

No surprise there. Feeling secure is one of the basic needs of people. It’s much easier to take risks if you have a fallback and don’t lose Berührung when things go wrong

This can also be seen played out in the article's graphs comparing the impact of job security versus the individual's employability. The negative mental health impact of having no employment or insecure employment is somewhat mitigated if one is employable -- defined as "being sure of getting an equally good job".

> much easier to take risks if you have a fallback

i agree. if you are employable and can readily obtain a reasonable job, and have resources to keep operating for a period without having work, it is far easier to engage in riskier but potentially much more lucrative opportunities for work (starting new businesses, taking on short-term contract work with much higher rates than permanent salaries for the same role, etc)

here's another interesting side of it: employability as defined above is a relative thing -- "being sure of getting an equally good job" [relative to your current job] . Suppose you have somehow found a job that is particularly good fit for you (perhaps it is very closely aligned with what you are interested in, and there are few other opportunities for such work, or it pays substantially above market rates given your skills and experience). You may be far more stressed about the possibility of losing your unusually good job due to how rare it is --- even though you may be highly employable in many other jobs or markets that you perceive as less good. You may also be more likely to put up with a large amount of stress and bullshit generated by your good job in order to hold onto it

in comparison, someone who works for a job that may be objectively less good (e.g. repetitive work, less pay, greater risk of physical injury) but is in a market where there is a large amount of demand for similar work may be far less stressed about the possibility of losing their job simply because in this market they are highly employable and there aren't any particular above-market benefits of working for any particular employer.

Myself I am experiencing the job effects of health insecurity, which I would posit are much worse.

Same. It’s way worse... I basically have to be ready to leave my job at any time if it starts to get bad enough.

Sorry to hear that, but you're right.

Add the two together, and boom. Worst case scenario.

I’ve lost my ability to work and gotten reestablished twice in the last three years. For about 4 months now I have felt ready to work again, but where do you go from there? It’s not like you can just hop in and start doing it.

I’ve lost my professional skills, my contacts, my clients, my workspace. Still working around feeling ill 40% of the time.

Getting re-re-re-established undoubtedly seems daunting. You've explored remote/contracting?

I’m actually trying to get reestablished as a glassblower. It’s low pressure and I can take days off as I see fit. I don’t feel right taking on the responsibility of doing tech jobs for anyone. Unfortunately it’s very difficult for me to share spaces with anyone, but at the same time, getting my own place could be a bad choice. If my health goes wrong again, moving out is a lot of effort and expense.

I have had a couple promising tech projects over the past few years, but lost momentum and had to abandon them at various times.

a really important effect to consider. once a whole sector's jobs are outsourced to another country, the newly redundant workers not only have income problems, but health and mental health problems. globalization's costs are higher than predicted, especially in the US where healthcare is inefficient and overpriced.

I think this speaks more to a lack of a social safety net that actually works.

A better social safety net would ensure that everyone had:

    * a home (near their family unit's job(s))
    * a job suitable to talent/skills
    * education towards suitable jobs if out of work
    * good healthcare
    * good child/retired family care
    * a stable, inclusive, welcoming community

This is a good list. I'd change "talent/skills" to "skills/aspirations", because we believe too much in talent (whether for being discouraged when all it really needs is work, or for misplaced belief in our own innate merit).

I'd maybe consider aptitudes and desires, it got a little muddled when I was trying to fit it in to a bullet-point list short enough to not irk mobile users. The lack of white-listed HTML / similar entities in formatting is a rather limiting factor for clearly conveying information.

Ideally some combination of testing / recommending potential raw talent, desired areas of work/interaction, and trainable job fields could be considered and find a good fit where someone could form a positive component of a larger and vibrant community. Also, ideally, automation owned by the masses (we the people, via the government) could handle the tedious and annoying tasks.

You would need to convince people to love their country more than they love advancing themselves and their bank accounts.

To me the story seems to be The Health Effects of unemployability.

That seems like a distinction without difference unless your main goal is to place blame for their problems rather than examine the effects and remedies objectively.

I see employability as a trait inherent to me. How I spend my time building my skill set, growing and maintaining relationships, and honing my story is what I see as my employability. I own it. It mitigates the risk from my choice to work in a role that provides me with a high level of Job Insecurity.

I see job insecurity as something inherent to the company and/or role within a company. Such as being at a small company which focuses on the development of a novel technology and/or a product in an untested market. Investors and strategy partners may not provide funding one day and -poof’- Job is gone. One goal of my job to influence the investor and partners, but I don’t own it. I make the choice to endure job insecurity because I believe in the strategy and see it and an outsized opportunity. Also I've never had a 'secure job', but I've assumed in most cases it is naive to believe ones job is secure, either big company or small company. Stuff can happen quickly and arbitrarily. Just what I've observed.

And based on the data in the OP study, I'd rather be employable and unemployed than unemployable and employed. This is what drove my initial comment.

edit (add relevance to article)

I'm trying to understand those graphs. They mention those graphs are on a scale of 0 to 100 but shows effects of 1 and 2. Is that considered a mild effect?

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