Smart Bombs: Adding injury to insult

The United States, with an overall unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, is not alone in experiencing a surge in pink slips. In Spain, the rate is 18.1 percent; France is at 8.9 percent; Canada, 8.4 percent, and Germany is at 8.3 percent. But sudden joblessness in America is more traumatic, because health care coverage is often tied to employment.

So while hunting for work, Americans must also worry about how to cover themselves and their families. COBRA is a federal program that allows workers to keep their coverage from their previous employer for 18 months, but they must pick up the entire cost. That can mean premiums as high as $1,000 a month for a family. For the time being, federal stimulus money is available to defray 65 percent of COBRA costs for nine months.

The unemployed can try to beat that price by shopping for individual policies, but they can be rejected for pre-existing conditions. Even if they succeed, it will be a huge added expense at a time when their income has vanished. Another option is to go uncovered, but that choice can lead to personal bankruptcy, which is another uniquely American aspect of our health care system.

This structural insecurity is a chief reason the nation ought to move away from the employer-provided health care model. Along with the heightened fear factor, there’s the fact that many Americans take and keep jobs they don’t particularly like because of the health care benefits. Plus, this linkage makes it riskier for people to start businesses, freelance or take jobs with small companies that can’t afford coverage.

It’s strange that America adopted a health care system that greatly impedes freedom.

Grin and bear it. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is the title of a popular book on the comedy of misplaced punctuation and bad grammar. The title relates to the imagery of a pistol-packing panda triggered by a comma that doesn’t belong there. In reality, the panda merely consumes greenery.

I think of that title whenever I read the incessant references by economists who see “green shoots” poking through the economic hardpan. It’s a handy image to convey cautious optimism, but you have to wonder after the latest unemployment figures. The number of people working today is slightly lower than it was in May 2000. That’s nine years and negative job growth, even while the population has expanded.

It’s like a plague of locusts that eats shoots and never leaves.

War and peace. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara died on Monday. It hardly seems fair that the architect of the tragic expansion of the Vietnam War lived to be 93 when so many young people had their lives cut short or horribly altered.

Condolences to his family, but “rest in peace” seems an odd phrase in this case.