If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?
That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.
Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.
Having healthcare tied to your employer is both a way for companies to pay less while offering more benefits to entice new workers and also keep workers from fighting too hard for their own rights because now maintaining a job is directly related to health. If we had universal healthcare, companies would have to compete more directly on wage and that would cost them more. Providing healthcare, while negotiating for deals for said healthcare means they can say that they are providing more benefits than they actually pay for.
And if people’s healthcare isn’t tied to their jobs there would be more people willing to start their own business increasing the chance of competition.