Hacker News Reader

Comment by iends | Hacker News Reader

Health insurance is heavily tied to your employer, though. It’s extremely rare to forgo your employers insurance and buy your own because the incentives just are not there. It’s also a huge consideration when you change jobs. It’s not unheard for people to go without insurance for 30-90 days when they switch jobs because the insurance doesn’t kick in until it kicks in at the new job.

(Not a huge issue in tech, though)

View on HN

Health insurance isn't "tied" to your employer. People seem to be using the word "tied" to mean, "they give me it for free so I don't have to pay for it myself."

Here's one: Coffee is tied to my employer because my work gives me free coffee on the job.

And how are you suggesting we fix this? By not allowing employers to give employees free / cheap health insurance?

Can you, in general, keep exactly the same insurance contract if you change employers (but paying it by yourself)? Because if not, and you ever had any serious condition, then, I would consider it tied to your employer.

In other countries, pension plans can be "tied" to your employer, i.e., while employed by X, you get some extra perks in your pension plan (and the payments into the pension plan are deducted from your salary, so you are paying for it yourself), but if you move to another company (or become unemployed) you cannot keep the same pension plan (even if you want to keep paying it by yourself); you are forced to accept whatever conditions are available at that time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com