01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 27, 2005

EVERY WEEK, it seems, some group of public employees agrees to pay a share of their health insurance. Teachers, firefighters, school administrators . . .

Good, you say. I have to pay for health insurance. Or, I don't even have insurance.

But why should workers -- those employed by someone else, which includes most of us -- be heartened when other workers lose benefits? Why not view those with better benefits as leading the way?

My daughter, who has health issues, is a public employee who pays part of her health-insurance costs. She's a social worker. She works hard -- won a $2,000 bonus last year for being her organization's outstanding employee. From among all six offices.

My daughter lives in Cleveland. She'd like to move back in a couple of years. She can't lightly take the chance. A new job might not work out. She could lose her health insurance.

Of course, with luck, she'll marry well. (I know, I know.)

There's a name for an economic situation where you can't change jobs or move because you are beholden to your employer. It's called "peonage." Those caught in it are peons.

It's ironic that this new kind of dependence results from the growth of health insurance to pay for medical advances that enable post-World War II Americans to be the first generations to assume (despite tragic exceptions) they will survive childhood.

It's not simple. Maybe we can't afford to guarantee health care to every American. Anyway, aren't there programs for really sick poor people, and for kids?

It's not perfect. Maybe if you're poor -- including the working poor (or middle-class) -- you have to lose some teeth, or give up stuff to buy medicine. Or worse?

Meanwhile, how much does fear of losing health insurance quash economic risk taking and ambitious job changing that we believe fuels the economy and makes opportunity real?

There's been talk about school systems banding into larger purchasing groups to cut health-insurance costs. What if everybody joined one huge group, and wherever you went you belonged?

Don Sockol is a Journal editor.