United States of Anxiety

Earlier this year, I had a couple of months off from work, and I was coming down with a fever one day. It was the regular stuff, headaches and sinus congestion. And I remember thinking “I shouldn’t go to the doctor right now, because I technically don’t have health insurance for this one month”. In hindsight, it sounds like the most ludicrous thing ever. My health should be my top priority, and I should have immediately had the fever checked out. Thankfully, it was nothing serious, but imagine if I had fractured a bone or caught a contagious disease during that time.

This is the reality that a lot of Americans live with every day. They don’t report medical issues and just get by simply because they won’t be able to afford it. I’ve seen people on the subway struggle with some physical pains and complain that healthcare is too expensive, so they’d rather just suffer through it. What if this was life threatening? In America, the fact that health insurance is so intricately linked to employment is so ridiculous. Every other developed nation has this as a basic right provided by the government. You’ll hear all sorts of insane arguments against it citing that the healthy shouldn’t have to pay for the unhealthy, but that’s literally how insurance works. You don’t decide what chronic condition you’re born with, and you don’t get to decide whether or not you want that expensive medication your doctor prescribed to get. You need to get it need to take it.

Speaking of things linked to employment, let’s talk about parental leave. If it wasn’t insane enough to link your health insurance to your job, now this is yet another thing expecting parents have to stress out about. Parental leave isn’t mandated by the government, and it’s totally up to the companies. The government gets off with no fault of its own citing that the companies should take better care of its employees. This assumes that the companies are working in their employees’ best interests, which is completely untrue in a capitalistic society. The company is only focused on maximizing shareholder profits and increasing revenue, not paying for their employees for months of not working.

This goes as you would expect. Typically, only the better-off companies offer parental leave, and even then, it’s weirdly linked to tenure. What if you were an expecting mother who recently started looking for a new role? Companies are heavily incentivized to deny you employment in favor of someone who isn’t expecting because they know you might be making use of that parental leave perk soon. It’s usually only the people who have stayed and worked at the company for a few years who get to take advantage of this “perk” as they’ve built up relationships with their co-workers and bosses.

The health benefits and healthcare systems in America are so intricately tied to their job structure that it boggles the mind how it even came to be. Sick days are often a part of paid time off, which makes no sense. If I tend to have a valid medical condition that requires me to take a more-than-average amount of days off from work, why should I give up my vacation time for it? It’s not like I’m enjoying myself while I’m sleeping in bed nursing an eye infection. There’s not even a set limit of PTO days mandated by the government. It’s simply again up to the companies, who as always, favor profits over paid time off.

And we haven’t even talked about mental health. It’s only now coming to the limelight how important this is. There are days when many of us feel off, or are dealing with a very stressful family event or are going through a tough time. This undoubtedly affects your performance, because you’re not feeling 100% and won’t be able to focus properly on work. The right course of action here is to take it easy, see a therapist if needed, and try to relax until you start feeling better. But no, the concept of mental health is still too taboo in America to bring up and corporations don’t seem to care at all. Instead of working with the employees to figure it out, they deny it outright.

The combination of all these things — lack of proper health insurance, insufficient health benefits, restricted paid time off, and a blatant disregard for sick days or mental health days — collectively leads to sense of constant anxiety and an overall feeling that you could lose everything overnight. One car accident, one fatal trip, one tragic family event. That’s all it takes. It could all happen in one moment and you’re suddenly be taking too much time off of work, negatively affecting your work performance and leading to your eventual removal from employment, screwing up your health insurance and income situation even more. Everything is tied into your job and you start to feel like the only value you’re adding to this world is through the work you do, or else your physical and mental health is of no value to anyone. Companies can’t see the grander scheme of things here. The collective consciousness of unhappy workers can do massive damage in the long term, but they don’t really care about the long term, do they? Either way, this is unfortunately a far too common situation in America today and I hope something gets done about it soon, or we’ll all be heading towards a very dark future where all of us start questioning whether we should see a doctor or not for any form of severe life threatening emergencies, be it physical or mental. And that’s not a future I want to live in.