For that matter, there's an entire other group of Americans -- tens of millions of them -- with no health insurance.

I'm not sure it's an entirely other group at all. If you don't have sick days, you likely don't have health insurance.

Now imagine that. You can't take a day off if you get sick, and if you do get sick, you have one more reason to work -- to pay off the doctor.

Lovely system we have here.

And the food service worker stat is terrifying during an epidemic. Even good restaruants don't insure their kitchen staff.

It probably doesn't help that CNN has been telling people that all they need is Tamiflu.

excatly....like i can stay home from work or go to a doctor...what planet do you people live on?(france?)

a pandemic is also a good example of when using the emergency room as your primary care (as some conservatives insist means that noone is without medical care) is a really bad idea. If there was a highly contagious disease going about, would you want to wait in a room with a bunch of other people who also think they are sick with that disease? That would be a good way to make sure you got it.

Obviously, these groups have it the worst, by far. Then there is the middle-group, who have "paid time off" (i.e., no separate sick time). No matter what the reason, you only get N hours/days off per year.

After a previous employer got rid of the sick/vacation dichotomy, the number of workers reporting in sick skyrocketed. The cacophony of coughing! Sneezing! Even, uh, stomach problems.

I know that I almost never stay home ill and have definitely been guilty of going to work sick quite often, because I want to use my limited time off for vacation! (My paralyzing phobia of going to the doctor, doesn't help either.)

This is WAY WAY better than not having the choice, though.

"It probably doesn't help that CNN has been telling people that all they need is Tamiflu."

I'd ordered antibiotics from a UK pharmacy for years beginning with Cipro during the anthrax days. Today though, they're completely out of Tamiflu. WTG, CNN.

Personally, I think we should all take double doses of chill pills. Panic may cause more problems than the actual bug.

The need for paid sick days in a pandemic I'll agree with. On the other hand, the value of universal coverage in a pandemic is mixed.

On the one hand, you do want people who are seriously ill to get treatment. On the other hand, as Hilzoy notes below: "Unless someone is seriously ill, avoid using emergency rooms to evaluate possible flu symptoms."

What you really want in a flu pandemic is for people who aren't *seriously* ill to just stay home, and away from other people as much as possible. Going to a physician for something that's not generally treatable might just spread it around more, and certainly would strain the already taxed resources of the health-care system.

Steve:

Why do you always pick on the free market?

Who knows better whether you should stay home and not have enough money to eat or whether you should go to work and get everyone else sick?

If I stay home and lose pay then it hurts only me. If I go to work and get my co-workers sick then there will be more work for me to do when I get better.

See, in the free market, if I stay home then I lose a lot. If I go to work then I lose a little less. In a free market I don't need to care about the other people because the invisible hand will take care of them.

"[O]f the top 20 economies in the world, the United States is the only one that does not have a national standard for paid sick days."

On a related note, the US is the only major industrialized country without a national standard for paid vacation, too.

And don't forget the U.S. doctor shortage.\

Brock,
But "universal health care" doesn't mean "everyone goes to the emergency room. It means that everyone is networked in to a primary care physician and knows that they don't have to fear some kind of "run on the bank" situation in which their only choice is the emergency room or nothing. People are being asked not to go to the emergency room but to self quarantine and to contact their local clinic/doctor to determine via phone what is the best treatment for each patient. That is eminently sensible and if every person actually had a primary care physician/nurse practitioner and the number of patients that person saw was capped at a reasonable number we'd all be better off.

On the secondary point about the incredibly poor treatment of restaurant workers its obvious from endemic food borne illnesses like hepatitis and dysentery that restaurants are a natural vector for lots of serious illnesses and that treating the workers there as though they are invisible and untouchable is a very bad decision public health wise. A restaurant is no different from a public water supply, in that sense. If it and its workers are polluted (to stretch my metaphor) the zone of infection is going to be huge.

The same, btw, is true for home health care workers. They are frequently without either paid vacation, paid sick leave, substitute care workers or even health care for themselves. Maybe they don't serve as much of a vector for illness since they routinely work for singeltons at home. But when they go down a lot of elderly and shut in people will simply die.

aimai

I wonder how many companies are like mine?

Stay home from work more than 3 days, and they insist you get a doctor's letter -- because on the 4th day our their "short term disability insurance" coverage starts.

So if you've got the flu, and all the good advice says to just stay home unless you have trouble breathing --- the insurance policy says you have to go drive on the freeway or ride the bus and sit in the doctor's office to get that letter, then go back home.

Stupid much?

I have sick days. I'm just not allowed to use them. I have health insurance. I just can't afford to use it.

Someone in my office is always sick, literally year round, as we pass illnesses back and forth due to these two problems.

The free market is delightful.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with my boss, the owner of a large company, who said, "I don't understand this idea of 'sick pay', if you're sick and you're not here, why should I pay you?"

The utter stupidity in his question shocked me at the time. But less than two years later, it was announced that he had sold the company and everyone would become "new hires" with no benefits.

Before that I had rarely ever missed a day of work for any reason, but after our conversation I realized it was best if I called in sick anytime it appeared I might have a difficult task that day. That way I had time to seek another job, and he could feel good about not paying me while I did it.

Still, I'm sure he never connected the conversation we had with my new attitude. And I was already gone for a month when the company sold.

While on the subject of legislation to improve public health, it’s time to examine the effect of the dangerous and “monstrous power of the American meat industry�.

It’s high time we regulate our factory farms – it’s a matter of time before nature fights back.

Steve,
thanks for bringing this up. I hope it should be included in the debate about health insurance the country is having. I don't get sick days either, which really sucks, because not only if you get sick, but if you have kids and they get sick, you have to take some of your vacation days or not get paid. I think it's really cruel. I can tell you of many times I got sick from other co-workers who came to work sick and then forced me to spend my vacation days when I needed to recover! why is this so hard to understand as a socially responsible policy? oh, no! it might be socialism?????

(Sorry, link corrected)

While on the subject of legislation to improve public health, it’s time to examine the effect of the dangerous and “monstrous power of the American meat industry�.

It’s high time we regulate the factory farms – it’s a matter of time before nature fights back.

Yeah, I'd like to also point out that the first places to be closed are often *schools* which has a negative, knock on effect through the entire economy since parents must then either find caregivers or stay home to care for children *or risk being arrested, fined, or otherwise punished for child abandonment.*

If the schools aren't officially closed but a child must stay home because of the flu the parent without parental leave/sick days is at risk of losing their job entirely, or losing pay to comply with other social demands like *not leaving minor children alone* in order to work.

As digby pointed out the truly scary thing to right wingers is the way an educated and informed electorate would grasp the connection between national preparedness/national security and eurpoean style socialistic practices like national health care, paid sick leave, etc...

aimai

At the risk of whining even though I have paid sick days/time off, there is another wrinkle. I can stay home, but there's work that still has to get done. But because my company has cut staff to the bone, there's nobody left to pick up the slack when somebody takes time off.

What Grumpy said.

We have no set number of sick days, if you are sick, stay home. Great, but what about deadlines and the very real risk of getting laid off. The one thing I have yet to read is about how employers expect more work per person in a recession. Hiring freezes, and ending contract and consulting services leaves the remaining employees with mountains of work.

I work in gas and oil, so we haven't had any layoffs, but that could change tomorrow and before you know it, my bout of swine flu could put me behind Joe who remained healthy and took up the slack I created. I work in tax and there are federal deadlines that can not be missed w/o serious consequences from the SEC, my boss, the board, and millions of stockholders. This week there are many firms scheduled to release their earnings. Pandemic or not, having a good job right now trumps any silliness of staying home.

I don't know about this. I am deeply involved in the running of two small businesses. If an employee is sick, I don't want the employee to come to work. The employees know it and they also know that even though I could I will not dock their pay. The payoff is great employee loyalty. Most small business owners I know actually care about their employees. They have little choice if they hope to succeed.

Big business folks, not so much.

Before I get really worked up I want to see some actual numbers before I think this is giant small business problem.

There is at least one place in the US with mandated sick pay! San Francisco.

It is given according to a formula which ends up giving one like 7.28 days per year or something weird like that if you are full time.

I agree with ScottW and Grumpy. It's much better for sick people to go to work and infect all of their co-workers so that productivity goes down from all the sick people working at half-speed. Plus, you might be able to infect someone who you were competing with for a promotion and they might die. So you'd have that going for you too.

Seriously, you guys are idiots for saying this. The problem you're describing isn't with sick people going to work. It's with bosses over-working employees. And sure, there will be occasional deadlines that might force people with deadly diseases to go to work, but to suggest that we should have a general policy of bringing deadly diseases to work in order to compensate for understaffed businesses, that's nuts. And the more places that have these policies, the worse it is for everyone.

Seriously, what part of "deadly disease" don't you understand? Not that I think we'll have a pandemic this time, but to suggest that we'll never have one is sheer folly. And your "solution" would only make things worse for your company and the country. Sorry Scott, but there are more serious consequences than anything the SEC or stockholders can do.

"It seems like a system that guarantees paid sick time and provides coverage to all Americans would serve the nation's interests pretty well right about now."

A rational statement like that will have the American RightWing calling you a Socialist... er Communist... er Fascist.

Doc... "Seriously, you guys are idiots for saying this. The problem you're describing isn't with sick people going to work. It's with bosses over-working employees."

That's precisely what I was saying. Which makes you an idiot for saying it too, I guess.

Sorry Grumpy. I wrongly lumped you in with what ScottW was saying, as he acted as if he was seconding what you wrote. But re-reading what you wrote, it's obvious you weren't saying that it's better to infect co-workers than to let the company suffer. Oops.

Doctor Biobrain.

I was simply explaining how the machine works, I never justified it. So thanks for being a total tool and acting like there is a whole lot of choice. And for the record, I work at the company that was voted the best place to work at in Houston (Houston Chronicle) number three in the country (Baron's).

The thing is I like working at Corporate America. For all it's flaws and greed and general bureaucracy, it still takes care of it's employees. Corporate America pretty much insures it's work force, we have liberal holidays, new equipment, a damn good 401k plan, and the pay is first rate.

That is rare in small business, and occasionally found in private business. Plus we all can't be Biobrain Doctors or politicians.

"...climbs to 86 percent for food service workers"

There's your pandemic right there. The cold-side guy who assembles your salad sneezes and you get swine flu.

I'd stay away from restaurant salads for a while. And especially salad bars.

Ohioan? The swine flu is coming in from PEOPLE, not from the American factory farms.

They are horrible, I agree, but it is not OUR swine who are transmitting the flu.

Is Doctor Biobrain as irony impaired as he seems?

You might think a business would realize that encouraging sick workers to stay on the job and spread disease to lots of other workers would play hell with their productivity and cost them more than paying the sick worker to stay home.....

But these types of companies didn't get where they were by thinking anything but lowest common denominator when it comes to wages and benefits.

Sorta like the idiocy now rampant among airlines to charge you for checked luggage....It encourages people to try and bring all their bags on board and stuff them in the overheads. Inevitably before the plane takes off, the harried steward crew is pulling bags out because doors won't close and fighting with passengers angry over having their bags taken below.

What it comes down to is that we are talking about people; human beings; actual reality, not theory and projections of our individual belief systems. When a person "comes down with" swine flu, or any other communicable disease, s/he may pass it along to someone else, another human being. In turn, that human being may pass it along to anyone with whom they come in contact. Gosh, how does anyone, whether government, corporation, dictator, school personnel (who seem most likely to be exposed to many "carriers" every day), etc. prevent the exposure and transmission of this virus, or whatever it is, to other people? People have to live their lives, go to work(how do they pay for healthcare, retain benefits provided by their employer if they are unemployed), go to school, go to the market for food, travel for business or pleasure, or whatever people do from day to day?

Personally, I have not had the flu in decades and consider myself extremely healthy, though I have some other physical limitations, and I have no insurance coverage. My employer cannot afford health coverage for me, nor can I pay for my own. I work for a very small organization and if I don't go to work every day, it would be very difficult for the organization to operate for more than a couple of days. This is the real world. I heard that Mexico has adequate supplies of flu medication for its people. I find this hard to believe since they are a 3rd world country whose people can barely live without receiving money from relatives who "illegaly" emigrate to the U.S. for jobs. Am I rambling?

The message is that the pandemic, or whatever it is, is all about people and how they interact. We cannot isolate ourselves or others for protection. We have to, at some point, recognize that we are all connected and this "swine flu" is just one more reminder of this fact.

I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation
peace,
st john

Did I say my company had already "cut to the bone"? Since I posted that comment, one of my co-workers was downsized. The guy who was going to cover for me when I go on vacation. On Friday.

Yet I'm thankful that I get paid vacations, and that it wasn't me who was downsized.