(Jim Hock) The New York Times David Leonhardt writes a fascinating column this week making the case that passage of health care is directly tied to America's innovation and job creation future. Think about it for a second. If potential employees are more worried about their potential health care benefits, it has a distortive effect. The reality is that they should choose a job because of the job and whether their skills match, not because of health care.
Businesses like ours have to forecast in health care cost increases of up to 20% annually. Not many other inputs to our bottom line have that volatility. And have you noticed recently that health insurance premiums have been jacked up again prior to potential reform? Let's face it -- health care is a broken market.
We need reform for a lot of reasons, but in other countries that we are competing with, health care costs less, serves more people (and oftentimes better service).
Mr. Leonhardt is on to something -- 1.5 million people stay in jobs they don't like or want because they are afraid to lose their benefits. It pains us when anyone is out of a job, but just think about the efficiency gains if people could be empowered to make better choices in this tough economy. And get healthier at the same time.