US Government: Billy, Don’t Be a Farmer
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Here’s a worrisome blog post from Ezra Klein. You thought your health care was bad? Well, you were right, but it seems farmers, the people who grow our food, which we need to, you know, live, have it even worse.
This is something Tom Daschle and the rest of Congress need to take a serious look at if they really want to reform health care. Because all these issues are connected: health care, the economy, food prices, oil prices, war, the environment. They require a holistic approach, and a Congress and a President willing to make bold moves.
In a policy paper almost custom-designed to catch this blog’s eye, the Access Project has released an issue brief on the intersection of farming and health care coverage. And the news isn’t good. Health policy types tend to assume a household is experiencing financial hardship from medical costs if they spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care. That’s true for 54 percent of folks who report their primary occupation as farming or ranching. Add in part-time farmers (which is common given that farming is often seasonal) and it’s 44 percent. That’s high. And high is bad.
Small farmers get their health insurance on the individual market. They are not protected by an employer’s bargaining power. They do not get to deduct their insurance costs, as employers do. And the individual market is bad, pricey place to get your health insurance. The median amount that farmers on the individual market get paid out-of-pocket for health insurance was $11,200. Those who got their insurance from an employer paid $5,600 out of pocket (they of course paid more out of potential wages redirected to health care, but that’s a different sort of burden).
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The fact that our health system specifically advantages stable jobs at large employers reduces entrepreneurship in all forms. Fewer people can start small businesses, move home to take over their family farm, or spend a couple years trying to make it as a rock band. Economic creativity is reduced across the board. Scraping by on low wages for a few years is one thing. Going without health care, particularly if you’re older or have a family, is rather another. It’s as true for the young innovator who wants to leave Bell Labs* and start his own company as for the tired office worker who’d prefer to return to Nebraska and reinvigorate the farm he grew up on. We have decided to discourage them as a matter of national policy. We have decided to make it easier for ConAgra and harder for family farms. The question is why.
