Working Without Insurance

For the last year, I've worked for a small business owner, who owns a franchise store. As with most small businesses, there are no benefits offered: no health insurance, no retirement, no vacations, no nothin'.

I don't really blame my employer. The insurance industry does not provide cost-effective, affordable health insurance for small business owners to offer their employees. The cost for employees to independently buy their own health insurance is also similarly high. But I don't understand why the parent company of my employer's franchise doesn't offer health insurance to all its franchise owners. They're surely big enough to offer an affordable plan.

I believe that no American, especially one who is working, should have to go without health insurance.

Either the government should provide incentives for the insurance industry to devise cost-effective, affordable health insurance plans for small businesses or they should extend Medicaid benefits to working Americans whose employers who do not offer it.

People wonder why some welfare recipients seemingly "don't want to work". Here is one big reason why.

On the domestic front, George Bush is up in arms about the possibility of gay people gaining the right to be legally married, but he doesn't seem to be too concerned that millions of working Americans have no affordable access to health care.

Talk about immoral. We are the ONLY industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee access to health care for all its citizens.

And that's something to be ashamed of.

Thoughts?