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If your employer offers health care, and requires that you pay 20% of the cost, that means your employer is paying 80% of the cost. That is an “employer subsidy” if you like. Except it really is part of your compensation package.

You are not “subsidized”, because you are working for the employer, and in exchange they are offering you income and benefits. The 80% they pay into your health insurance fund is no more of a “subsidy” than the 10 holidays they give you, or the 15 vacation days, or whatever sick days they offer.

These are all part of the compensation for your work.

A Senator works for the federal government. THey get a salary (which I guess you could call a “subsidy from the government”). They get time off, they get a fund to pay for their travel to/from their state, they get money for staff, money for living expenses. They also had health insurance, for which they paid a small percentage while their employer paid the rest.

The Obamacare law required that all these representatives be removed from their current insurance, and instead they would buy from the exchange. However, it did NOT directly state that the employer contribution should change.

If they had wanted to do this more clearly, they could have simply cancelled the contribution and added it to their salary. Then the salary would be higher, and it would pay for the insurance, and it would be the same as it is now.

This is NOT the “income subsidy”. This is part of the compenseation for the job he performs.