How Japanese black companies oppress workers (2014)

I wouldn’t call losing your source of income and maybe your health insurance no practical repercussions.

I don’t know in which countries you worked but I didn’t have any problems getting out of a contract.

Inexplicably linking employment with healthcare seems unrelated to at-will employment.

America has very low unemployment and median household incomes are among the highest in the world. You get to continue your existing health insurance 18 months after you quit if you wish, you just have to pay for it. Most people can and if you can’t then the government pays for it.

While getting terminated is disruptive, it isn’t the end of the world for the typical American. The relative ease with which most people can get another job is also nice. It is an economy that is structured under the assumption that people will move between jobs and minimizes the friction in doing so.

I have seen the “having a contract” thing abused many times in many countries in Europe. Thanks, but no thanks. I have had that contract multiple times and I don’t want that contract. That safety blanket comes with heavy chains. I’ve seen those contracts used to stifle far too many employees to condone it, employees deserve better.

While your comment may shed some light on the nuances, gp’s point shouldn’t be disregarded. Losing income and health insurance is in fact amongst the most practical of repercussions one can experience upon losing a job.

I can spell it out, if it helps. In a country with exorbitant healthcare costs, it means that leaving your job means that you (and often your family) don't get healthcare.

The other part is that companies are much more willing to hire people if they know they can get rid of them if either that person ends up sucking or business starts to fall off.

I believe it’s the case that in some places, bureaucrats can basically just say “no” if you decide to lay people off. Why would you want to hire people in the first place if there were a risk of that happening, especially if you have the option to hire people in a different country?

COBRA?

The reason is explicable - health insurance paid by the employer is tax-deductible, while insurance paid by the employee is not. Therefore, employers include it as a way to increase total compensation at a lower cost.

The origin of the practice was in WW2, when Roosevelt froze wages. To attract more and better employees, the companies threw in health insurance as a way around the restrictions.

I'm thinking you misinterpreted the comment you responded to? I read it as saying that you don't necessarily have to have employment linked healthcare just because you have at-will employment.

The "inexplicably" being a commentary on the wisdom/sanity/compassion of linking healthcare to employment, rather than a claim that the parent comment had made an inexplicable leap of logic

That’s super expensive. ACA is often better but that may change now with the republicans having control of congress.

The flipside is that you have no job security. In Europe, we've been moving towards more American style "flexible employment" for years, and it's highly controversial.

As an aging guy, I'm also staring down the barrel of cross-party consensus on replicating the predatory US healthcare model in my country. I see what things look like in the States, and no thanks.

> While getting terminated is disruptive, it isn’t the end of the world for the typical American.

Whenever conversations like this come up, I feel the need to remind folks that most folks don't work in tech for colossal salaries. Around a quarter of Americans have less than USD 1,000 saved, most under 5,000.[0] No runway is the norm, I'd put that well above "disruptive" for "most Americans".

[^0] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-ameri...

I very much read it as I responded, and re-reading, still interpret it as such.

> That’s super expensive

COBRA costs you exactly how much you + your employer were paying for that insurance.

It's expensive because your employer's share of insurance was a significant part of your compensation (And because US healthcare costs are pants-on-head insane.) I'll point out that it's generally quite expensive to, like, stop getting paid.

Practically, post-ACA, health insurance in the US is about as tied to employment as having a roof over your head and food on your table is. If you don't have employment, or money, you're going to be in trouble - but that's the case with everything you need to live, not just healthcare.

That this needs to be spelled out just shows that HN operates in an extremely privileged bubble. Some people are aware of it, but most don’t seem to be.

It is, though, because it kind of transfers most of the power in the relationship to the employer. Without it, I imagine they'd find some other way, or lobby the state away from at-will employment.

They don't save because they don't need to since there's always a job available as hiring is so easy. In Europe we need to save in case we want to quit, since then we lose all rights and protections and need to wait months before finding a new job.

But the discussion wasn't about "generic at-will" employment. It started as "American at-will" employment.

> > I have come to the conclusion that the American “at-will” employment model is actually a good thing and benefits workers

It may seem like you can just walk away from a job but realistically most people can't.

Thanks for reminding us that state intervention is the source of the problem.

Stop linking medical insurance to employment via this tax bigotry. Buy it on the open market instead, or subsidize it if you're a leftist, but don't put that burden on jobs, you'll only get fewer jobs with greater hassle. People can agree to the arrangements they prefer, and it's not for us to second guess that. If there are people who end up coming up short, then you can help them yourself, or force the whole society to chip in (again, if you're a leftist), but don't force such considerations on the fragile links among private individuals and businesses.

Our regulations (including the medical guild) and legal structure (including crazy malpractice payouts for unintentional mistakes) forces everything to be more expensive than necessary. We are very far from a free market, even if we stopped with the untaxed benefits.

A major reason poor people don't save is the inflationary currency and government control of interest rates (plus other central bank policy) encourages debt over saving. We slowly put a noose around our necks because our laws put lights on that runway. We need major reform to get back to a saving mindset. It'll be a world where the government will borrow and print far less money.

In most of them there is an initial probationary trial period during which you can easily fire someone without providing any justification, and with a minimal mandatory notice.

It goes both ways: during that time, the employee too can quit with a reduced mandatory notice.

That only covers the "if that person ends up sucking" part though.

For the other "business falling apart", maybe they consider it’s part of the business owner’s responsibility to make sound business decisions when involving someone else’s livelihood. Just like when leasing a shop or taking on a loan.

France is especially like that, with consequent mass unemployment. That's the model the progressive side of our politics wants to emulate.

> For the other "business falling apart", maybe they consider it’s part of the business owner’s responsibility to make sound business decisions when involving someone else’s livelihood. Just like when leasing a shop or taking on a loan.

What about running a tech startup with high chance of failure? Ever considered why they seem to be few and far between in EU?

US healthcare is a market but not for patients. Insurance, employers and hospitals negotiate a lot. But people who get employer based insurance just have to accept what they are given. Pretty crazy.

"Most people" are not dependent on health insurance for their average needs, except in the long-term or unexpectedly.

Then of course, being unemployed, you have the option of COBRA (you probably don't want that though), and if it does not make you immediately eligible for Medicaid in your state (40 of 50 have Medicaid expansion), it would make you eligible for the ACA subsidized plans. NB: more than one-third of employer-sponsored plans are HDHPs, meaning employees have deductibles in the thousands of dollars anyway.

It's certainly a disruption, and it's one more thing to consider, but the idea that "most Americans" are one job loss away from being killed by lack of health care is not remotely true - most people don't need health care that regularly, unemployed people have insurance options, and at a last resort, for the most part, you can accrue unlimited medical debt in most places with few real-world consequences.

> The other part is that companies are much more willing to hire people if they know they can get rid of them if either that person ends up sucking or business starts to fall off.

That and other reasons (few vacantion days, request to overtime, etc) is why one should avoid American companies in Europe, if possible.

Trust goes both ways.

I'm looking at the data and there is zero relationship between inflation, interest rates and personal savings in the USA. People save in time of crisis (2008, covid, etc.), and don't when the economy is good (1990 -> 2007)

Don’t most large employers essentially self insure? They only outsource the administration to insurance companies, not the float.

No, I really haven’t. Please enlighten me.

Poor people don't save because they are poor and there's nothing to save.

It costs loads more to be poor than to have some money. You won't save money by buying up-front, if your credit is low you'll pay more than a person with more money, you miss payments and the late fees rack up, you overdraft and your fees add up, you can't go on autopay to save money because you risk going into overdraft, etc.

Maybe if the 1% didn't own 50% off all the resources (money) than poor people could find some money to save.

COBRA is an expensive joke

>The reason is explicable - health insurance paid by the employer is tax-deductible, while insurance paid by the employee is not.

It would be very easy to reverse, if literally anyone was willing to.

In what way is losing income from quitting different in at-will vs the article? Losing the income is a consequence, but it's the same consequence in both cases and so is not part of the conversation and silly to mention.

If you lose healthcare """insurance""" when you lose your job, you never had real insurance to start with.

(The system might work if some lag was introduced (a year of keeping that level of insurance??), but I'm not sure that this duration would not quickly get sapped by perverse incentives ?)

Aren't healthcare costs in line with the very high US income levels (with people spending a high fraction of their income in it, because they can afford to), and the main issue is inequality (including lack of real insurance)?

My wife was once a day light on her birth control. Nine months later, she delivered a boy.

For most women of child bearing age, between birth control and annual visits, healthcare is pretty important.

Kirkules is correct.

Hillary was for single payer. Trump ran on repealing even the ACA. I don't think it's as simple as literally anyone.

I'm not talking about changing the healthcare system entirely, but the tax deduction status.

Right, but we're currently at a point politically where we're heavily considering regressions in healthcare and insurance, not progressions. We're talking about bringing back denying coverage for existing conditions and allowing insurance to deny medication on grounds of religious reasons.

Changing the tax deduction status would harm businesses, and therefore I can't see a conservative administration ever letting that fly.

We left the free market of healthcare behind because it was awful for consumers. People who were disabled or otherwise had chronic conditions were, more or less, completely screwed. Not to mention these regulations are very much necessary. We want educated and highly certified doctors cutting you up.

Yes, naturally such a system is biased towards high accountability and high trust industries. Industries which thrive on minimal accountability and trust won't function very well. Personally, I think that's a good thing overall. The problem comes in when other countries don't operate this way, so those businesses can just go there (and take your talent with you, i.e. brain drain).

Which goes again to my original point.

> In what way is losing income from quitting different in at-will vs the article?

This question isn’t relevant to the claim that I am responding to.

> Losing the income is a consequence, but it's the same consequence in both cases and so is not part of the conversation

You’re right that having no income is the same as having no income, and the manner in which it was lost does not matter. But the state of “having no income” does indeed matter. That statement is relevant to this conversation due to gp’s claim that losing income and health insurance are not “practical repercussions” of losing employment. That’s a naïveté that a stable society cannot abide.

(and remember to figure out a difference that applies to San Francisco and Boston and NYC and Austin but not Kansas City or New Orleans.)

> Most people can and if you can’t then the government pays for it.

For now.

> The relative ease with which most people can get another job is also nice.

This seems unemphathetic. Even just for the tech industry, thousands of engineers have found it difficult to find new work after the layoffs of the previous years. Please do not extrapolate your experience of the ease of finding new work towards every other American.

> It is an economy that is structured under the assumption that people will move between jobs and minimizes the friction in doing so.

No. Even if you look at it from a process perspective, true minimized friction is when other countries goverments automatically deduct and manage your taxes when you move jobs, manage retirement funds and have socialized healthcare to reduce the stress and uncertainty during unemployment. You claim that "at-will" minimizes friction is a joke compared to those.

My apologies, I stand corrected.

Birth control is available over the counter in the US. If you have specific need, it’s very cheap and your doctor will almost always just call in refills without charging you. The meds themselves are not expensive.

Annual visits are also not actually that important. They’re perfunctory. They can certainly be put off for a few months in a ok except a few one in a million cases.

And at any rate, as I said, losing your job in the US means your insurance is disrupted, not that you are now uninsured. Pregnancy even in states without Medicaid expansion will get the mother and child on Medicaid.

Of course, at the risk of being silly, it’s also true that missing a day of birth control is not what got your wife pregnant. ;) it’s pretty surprising to me how many people (now with children) thought birth control meant they wouldn’t get pregnant. There definitely needs to be better education on this. Taking birth control, even regularly, even with an IUD, is more like a backstop and should not be relied on for your primary protection. The odds are low but when you play them a few times a week for ten years…

Sure. The point is that the employer does all the selecting of options and the patient/employer has to take what the employer chose. No market for the patient.

Sure, but the inexplicable bit is that there's no actual reason it has to be that way.

There's no reason why a law cannot be passed amending the tax code to make health insurance premiums paid by an individual tax deductible.

I'm not saying it would be easy to get such a law passed, but that doesn't change the fact that it's stupid to have health insurance tied to your employer.

(At any rate, health insurance premiums are tax deductible, but the rules are annoying and require that your healthcare spending be a certain percentage of your income.)