And it's not very liberating for the employee, because he can't reduce his costs by living as healthily as he can and opting for cheaper coverage to prevent catastrophic losses, such as a Major Medical plan or a Health Share plan, or no coverage it all. (The latter has heretofore been common for Americans who are in low-risk groups, e.g. young unmarried employed men ages 20 - 30, who choose to take that $nK a year and put it into something they want more, i.e. a business start-up.)(We call this "choice".)
It also results in a sharp reduction in the number of providers, since doctors will get out of a system which micro-manages their professional and ethical judgments and triples their paperwork. Most potential medical students won't bust their butts to go through all those years of schooling, internship, residency, etc. just to be put in the shackles of a system "with all the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service and all the compassion of the IRS".
Thus you'll get a lot of foreign doctors (like in Britain), a lot of less-competent doctors, and a lot of medical tasks being shifted into the hands of nurse-practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other non-MD's, with the consequent loss of professional training and expertise.
And at last --- the ultimate cost-effectiveness measure --- you get the Adios treatment: the Liverpool Care Path, a.k.a. mandatory terminal sedation.
Adios!
Paying in income-type tax would be much less burdensome to businesses than the current system of yearly negotiations with insurance companies and administering the insurance paperwork for their employees.
And it's not very liberating for the employee, because he can't reduce his costs by living as healthily as he can and opting for cheaper coverage to prevent catastrophic losses, such as a Major Medical plan or a Health Share plan, or no coverage it all. (The latter has heretofore been common for Americans who are in low-risk groups, e.g. young unmarried employed men ages 20 - 30, who choose to take that $nK a year and put it into something they want more, i.e. a business start-up.)(We call this "choice".)
Welcome to the burdens of living in a modern society. We make it mandatory here in Florida to purchase auto insurance to protect people from having to deal with paying for things out of pocket caused by uninsured motorists. Health coverage ought to work the same way, everybody pays in and it is there when you need it.
It also results in a sharp reduction in the number of providers, since doctors will get out of a system which micro-manages their professional and ethical judgments and triples their paperwork. Most potential medical students won't bust their butts to go through all those years of schooling, internship, residency, etc. just to be put in the shackles of a system "with all the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service and all the compassion of the IRS".
We're already undergoing a severe shortage of doctors and it's been happening since before the passage of Obamacare. It's caused by a population increasing faster than the medical schools can push out doctors. Fix the supply of doctors by building more medical colleges and making it so that becoming a doctor doesn't mean taking on crushing levels of student debt.