I’m convinced that if affordable, no-strings-attached health insurance were universally available, large numbers of Americans could and would escape from wage slavery. Why stay on the treadmill if you can earn enough independently to support an acceptable lifestyle? The only thing that keeps people in chains is the exorbitant cost of health insurance.

As we see, if Tina had waited three or four weeks before accepting the yoke, a freelance job paying more than GDU’s 9-to-5 would have come along. Given a choice between the two, though, she still would have had to take the underpaid day job (which entails more work, plus an unpleasant commute plus $800/year to park her car plus a boss looking over her shoulder eight hours a day), because she has to have health insurance for herself and her child. If she had access to affordable healthcare, she could have taken the better-paying independent contract that allows one to work remotely, from anyplace one cares to live.