The first industry that can't seem to afford health insurance for its employees is the nursing home industry. It's ironic, but it shouldn't be surprising.
This story from the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/...
got the attention of the people at Map Light
http://maplight.org/...
who looked at it mostly from the point of view of 'follow the money'.
Perhaps Map Light has a accusing attitude toward the Nursing Home lobby. I wish the nursing homes would lobby for a different kind of relief -- a national health care system.
Here's why I think nursing homes are one of the first types of business that simply can't afford health insurance for their employees:
Nursing homes operate with a lot of relatively low-skilled labor. It takes a lot of time to give bedbound patients their baths. A lot of nursing home patients need to be fed by hand, and more need to be diapered. Changing the sheets with a patient in the bed is a two-person job, and to do it without tearing old fragile skin, you have to take your time. You have to staff for three shifts, 7 days a week. And I can't imagine automating any of that work, or even coming up with any labor-saving devices.
Medicare and Medicaid pay for most nursing home care in the USA. And they don't pay that well. It's probably impossible for nursing homes to pay for health insurance for their employees on their proceeds.
What I wish they'd lobby for is to put all those employees on Medicare and/or Medicaid.
If it's good enough for the patients, it ought to be good enough for the employees. If it's what the patients deserve, don't the people who wipe up after them 24-7 deserve as much?
As a baby boomer who might be in a nursing home in a decade or two, I have a serious self-interest in seeing that the people who'd be wiping up after me don't resent the job.