Setting the Record Straight on Paid Leave

As paid family and medical leave insurance gains in visibility, it’s been important to correct misinformation in the media and lift up the benefits of establishing such funds – and the costs of failing to do so. Economist Eileen Appelbaum summed up years of research on the issue in an article in the Hill, noting that “family and medical leave insurance is the fairest way to deliver the benefits of paid leave to working families at reasonable cost to employers and employees.”

The New Republic published an op-ed from Ellen Bravo correcting two Washington Post editorials. A cancer survivor added his views in a letter to the Post editors that notes, “It’s time to stop asking how much it would cost and start asking how much it will help.” And CNN.com summed up the extensive evidence on the health benefits of paid leave. They quoted Bravo as saying, “unlike other kinds of national emergencies … we know the solution for this. We know exactly what it looks like and we know what it takes to do it and we know that it works. All we need is the political will to get it done.”