NEWSFLASH: Many working people aren't offered health insurance through their employers.

[raccoon]

This message is from one such person.

I work for a state agency and 50% of the employees are part-time, no benes, NO HEALTH INSURANCE.

Now, most of yall DU'ers probably knew this already, but I put it here mainly for lurking tea-baggers/Republicans.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Say it's not so!

[Warpy]

2. I worked the last 15 years of my nursing career with NO INSURANCE

Hospitals refused to hire me on staff because of my health history. I worked agency and per diem with no benefits.

That's right, the people who take care of you when you get sick are likely to be uninsured if they're over 35 and most nurses are. Nurses as a whole are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than any other profession.

Fellow nurses who got cancer and were insured went bankrupt from all the copays. That's the misery of being insured: it doesn't protect you from financial ruin if you get sick.

There was simply no way for me or anyone else I know in my situation to afford a private policy, even if we could find an insurance company to write one.

For profit insurance DOES NOT WORK, even though most uninsured people do.

[raccoon]

5. WTF!!!

"Nurses as a whole are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than any other profession."

[Warpy]

7. That was in one of the nursing trade journals a few years ago

It made me very sad to know I was far from alone.

[laughingliberal]

6. True. Nurses did not fare well under the for profit system.

It wasn't always like this but I saw our profession driven into the gutter when the for profit corporations took over the hospitals. Raises were low or non-existent, benefits slashed, workloads increased to unsafe levels. For profit health care ruined health care here.

[NC_Nurse]

9. Me too. I am currently working per diem to take care of family members. No

insurance coverage for me or my husband who is in school again since there are NO jobs for him now.

There isn't any relief for those of us who work part time to care for elderly family members either. Which actually saves taxpayer dollars, I might add. It's
quite frustrating. We had to leave jobs and move to do it, so there is no "family medical leave" for that. I worked full time for a while, since my husband could not
find work. Now I've had to drop to barely part time. I'm no spring chicken myself, so I doubt the private insurance market will take me. I start to make calls tomorrow. :(

[RKP5637]

3. No surprise here, exactly true! Anyone that thinks their health insurance is

going to just keep moving along and they will be covered and happy is a damn fool and/or on the take and part of the problem.

[panader0]

4. I have a small construction company

My employees have Workman's Comp. I can't even afford to carry it on myself. No insurance, fingers crossed.

[meowomon]

8. I'm a nurse and my company had to drop insurance last year.

So now, I have to leave a job I love! I work with the developmentally disabled and I hate to leave them. Just for health insurance.

[Hidden Stillness]

10. They Either Give Nothing, or Claim They Do, but It Covers Nothing

Not only that, but most of the "insurance" that employers "offer" is so crappy that it never actually covers anything, especially for all those minimun-wage-and-just-above-it service-sector, etc., jobs. None of those jobs, that I have ever known, covers dental, eye exams and glasses, catastrophic or long-term care, etc. Over and over, I have asked, "What is this thing actually good for?" because nothing ever came up that it covered. People just assumed that they were covered for "anything really bad, just not the normal things," but they are always crap to me, that I have ever read. Also remember, Wal-Mart was caught a couple of years ago signing its employees up to Medicaid, so the States and the taxpayers will have to pay the bill, while Wal-Mart advertises that it "offers its employees health insurance"; there were no consequences for them--again.

[invictus]

11. K&R