Thanks for the apology - but completely unnecessary... funny how one little comment in the early hours of a saturday morning in bed can cause a ruckus. I think that we agree 100% here. I can't explain enough how done I am with healthcare in this country. I could tell stories... I could give figures... but I think kleinbl00 has put it more eloquently than I could have. US healthcare is so far past broken that it's a miracle that it isn't agreed upon across the aisle. I just know that I pay so much it hurts.... and I get really sub par service... that I'm often afraid to use because I can't afford it. There's a guy at church I'm working with. We literally had this discussion yesterday - except - instead of a cold or flu - it was an INJURED BACK ON THE F&%KING JOB AND WAS FIRED FOR MISSING WORK BECAUSE OF HIS INJURED BACK. It's mind boggling... but legal for a company to jump through the right hoops and fire some one after the company has broken them for life.edit: sorry steve, I got mad. It's not your fault.
If somebody's sick, they should be able to take a day off without fear of being fired via 'at will employment'." I mean, if someone is sick and on the job, that shit is a health and safety issue - that's how disease spreads, by some sick dude in a restaurant touching your flatware, which you touch, then touch your face, and then YOU get sick.
FUN FACT: if you have less than 8 employees you aren't required to abide by really any of the workplace regs that we have anyway. So whatever safety net you might have with a big company, it's entirely f'n absent from a small one. Which makes sense: the regs we got are pretty damn onerous on a small company (you have three employees and they all need to be provided healthcare and 2 weeks paid vacation? Yeah, that's why you have one employee and always will). But also makes no goddamn sense - the regs we got are supposed to allow people to survive, not thrive, and if we're really about backing small business, it probably shouldn't be demonstrably perilous to work for one.