Tying Healthcare To The Workplace

The way that America handles insurance is primarily aimed not at helping make various things like healthcare more accessible to the general public.  Splitting up health, dental, and vision insurance is just one asinine example of a way to generate more insurance revenue rather than consolidate insurance at more affordable rates.  This splitting of the purchases is a thing that would never be done unless stupidity and the blind pursuit of profit were the motivating factors.  Especially with these different aspects of what is ultimately just health insurance spread out across different categories, insurance could easily be an expensive thing for many people, particularly those who have little to no money to devote to anything except the bare minimum to keep themselves alive or continue to have housing and power.

It is an important clarification that just because someone could technically afford to pay for insurance--that they have sufficient money for it--does not mean they are able to do so without jeopardizing the other things in their life they need money for, food, water, and gas included.  If only people did not have to deal with more than one expense at a time!  Maybe there are many people who could afford to pay for insurance, consultations, medications, or operations, but at the expense of living safely or comfortably in other ways for a few weeks or months.  Workplace benefits offering insurance with cheaper premiums suddenly become very appealing in this context.  With this kind of vulnerability, though, comes the opportunity for an egoistic employer to make someone feel trapped in a job where they are mistreated, as if they have to stay for the sake of one benefit.

Offering fully covered or discounted insurance to employees as a benefit alongside direct compensation is in no way an oppressive thing.  Coupling healthcare/insurance with professional work in this way would not be the issue.  Structuring insurance, healthcare, and the workplace so that it is impossible, or almost impossible, for those who are not already wealthy to consistently afford everything from regular, basic doctor's appointments to needed medications is oppressive.  This of course goes far beyond any specific company or even industry.  The sometimes massive paywall for insurance or medical attention is not just the fault of exploitative workplaces that dangle something alluring to distract from other injustices, but the error of for-profit insurance that will go so far as to perhaps charge people more for healthcare with the insurance they pay for than they would pay without insurance!

Insurance can then become another tool to entice oppressed workers (and no, not all workers are oppressed because just being an employer is not what makes someone an oppressor) to remain with a company even as they are mistreated over and over again--for how else would some of them be able to afford healthcare of the kind they might need?  Tying insurance and other benefits to  a job is left to itself a clever, helpful way to attract employees and reward/take care of workers at the same time.  Using it as bait to keep the attention of exploited workers away from the cruelties they are subjected to is not benevolent; it is just another way to do something that might superficially seem inviting and kind but that turns out to be just another way to trap workers.  The employees who truly need workplace-provided insurance to get by are not encouraging this tactic by taking the insurance, but selfish employers who only want to manipulate or distract their workers through benefits like insurance would only be enabled to hold yet another gun to their heads.