The phenomenon of job-lock in the United States may be caused by a major non-portable fringe benefit provided by employers: health insurance. Would-be entrepreneurs and other self-employed individuals may not be achieving their full potential due to being “locked” in their wage-employment. With data from the Survey of Consumer Finances in years 2004, 2007, and 2009, this study explores this effect, whether it exists, and whether it is lessened by worse health status. Amongst married households, there is evidence that husbands are 9.2% more likely to be entrepreneurs if their spouses have employer coverage, whereas wives are not. Somewhat surprisingly, this effect is not associated with health care demand. Amongst non-married individuals, employer coverage restricts transitions into self-employment by 3.6%. Both of these results provide evidence for job lock, and have loose implications on how universal healthcare may free individuals to pursue entrepreneurship.

Relocating health behaviors within a political-economic framework, this article utilizes health behavior and health insurance governance perspectives to showcase the complexities of cultural and economic factors (e.g., job lock, wage differentials, social location, and health insurance status) that influence choices in efforts to mitigate the financial burden of health risk. By exploring the financial links to health behaviors that emerged through ethnographic participant observation and semistructured interviews with community and union members of the United Steelworkers and Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union in a metropolitan Central Appalachian community in 2007–8, this article argues for expanding the health behaviors concept to include a broader array of actions individuals and families take to better their health and well-being in the context of neoliberal shifting of risk management to individuals through increased consumer market-based cost-sharing health insurance disincentives. In so doing, this article argues for the importance of social and political-economic context in health behaviors and in evaluating health policy, including the Affordable Care Act.