Employer-Tied Health Care Is Also a Tech Accountability Issue
Can you afford to speak up if losing your job also means losing access to physical and mental health services?
Last year, I blew the whistle on race and gender discrimination I experienced at Pinterest. My story and that of my former colleague Aerica Shimizu Banks has so far led to a shareholder lawsuit and a moment of reckoning for a company that for so long held itself up as the positive corner of the tech industry.
But what few people may realize is that if I had dependents, like a child or spouse, I might never have told this story — all because of the cost of health insurance.
Whenever I see a story of another tech worker pushed out of a job for exposing their employer’s egregious and often illegal behavior, I take a look at what day of the month it is and wonder what they’ll do about health care next month — in the midst of a pandemic, no less.
Since leaving Pinterest in May 2020, I have paid $884 a month for COBRA ($895 as of January) to keep access to my therapist, the physical health services that I need, as well as insurance that could become necessary at any time in the event of an emergency, like the rare cancer that claimed my mother’s life before she turned 50. At a time when I…
