I offer healthcare to keep workers working for me — it’s an employee retention benefit that helps cover the cost of training. As it is now, if they quit, covered workers will have to pay for their own heathcare or find another company that’s willing to pay for it.

Perhaps that’s mean to think this way, but it’s really my only means to keep people from jumping shop at the first higher-paying opportunity. Anyway, that’s what I do/did. When congress gave free healthcare to everyone as of this year, they not only raised my taxes, and my company taxes, they also removed a key tool I have for keeping people on the job. In return, I suppose my healthcare fees are supposed to go down, but I have no faith they will, in part because I worked for the government and have no faith in their ability to be efficient or fast moving; in part because my ability to pay for healthcare comes from my ability to keep trained workers.

Though I’m not too happy about the change, I imagine (hope) that my employees are happy. Their  taxes will go up a bit, but they will be more free to jump ship at will. I imagine that the unemployed are especially thrilled, though I don’t know why that was not implemented through an increase in Medicare and Medicaid. In a sense I’m surprised it took congress this long to give everyone “free” healthcare without forcing them to work for it.