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Paid sick leave is a benefit many of us take as a given, but almost one-quarter of workers in the United States don't get any paid sick leave at all.

That puts the employee in a very difficult position - reluctant to not go to work even when sick because they can't afford to lose their wages. Other high-income countries mandate sick leave and in 2012 Connecticut became the first state to adopt a sick leave mandate.

Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia have followed suit.

It might not be surprising to learn that paid sick leave mandates reduce the likelihood of people going to work when they're sick. But do these mandates affect the use of emergency room?

Yanlei Ma from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute joins A Health Podyssey to discusses the relationship between state paid sick leave mandates and emergency department use.

Ma and coauthors published a paper in the August 2022 edition of Health Affairs examining the effect of state-level mandatory sick leave policies on emergency department visits. Listen to learn about the relationship they found.

Order the August 2022 issue of Health Affairs for research on spending, payments, and more.

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Subscribe to UnitedHealthcare's Community & State newsletter.