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It is illegal to attach your health care insurance to your occupational compensation. Everybody would have to buy it like most people buy car insurance.

That's a foolish idea. My company covers something like 75% of my healthcare costs. Detach it from my compensation and suddenly my monthly bill balloons to upwards of $1500. Nobody would by it because nobody could afford it.

That’s a foolish idea. My company covers something like 75% of my healthcare costs. Detach it from my compensation and suddenly my monthly bill balloons to upwards of $1500. Nobody would by it because nobody could afford it.

With the exception of your first sentence, I agree with you. That is how it would seem, at least. But look at it practically in the mid term:

1. Your company no longer supplies health care. People tell their employers that they want the money the company was spending on their behalf.
2. Nobody is buying it because it is too expensive. So what do the companies do? Go out of business? Nope. The business is a cash cow. They cut costs to the point that people DO buy the insurance.
3. And you can bet that just as with car insurance, where your age and driving record can affect your rates, this would happen in health insurance. It means that people with pre-existing conditions or older people would pay more, which is fair.
3. But wait, it gets better. Just as with car insurance, where you can choose what to protect yourself against, you could with this too. Why would a menopausal married couple need to cover pregnancy? Why would a couple where the husband has been snipped cover pregnancy? See where I am going with this.
4. Health care costs - If fewer people have insurance, more people would be walking off the street for coverage. It would become competitive just like other businesses. I had $5,000 deductible on my family back in the early 80’s. One day my daugher (mid 1980’s) broke her arm. Insurance did not cover it. It cost me around $275 from beginning to end. No, I did not leave out any zeros. Even at the time that was less than a single months premium of a full coverage plan, OFFERED BY MY EMPLOYER.

The government created this “employer, health insurance” connection during WWII when they instigated wage freezes. To incentivise potential employees, companies got around this by offering free health care insurance. Just be thankfull they didn’t offer free mortgage payments. Imagine where we’d be.

Stuart Varney just reported on FoxNews that sticker shock is coming in the form of ‘deductibles’ under Obamacare.

He says in California, the mid-level premium policy deductibles are in the $2,000 range and cheaper level premium deductibles are in the $5,000 range.

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More ‘gotchas’ from deep in the bowels of Obamacare — now that politicians and newsies are reading some of it to find out what is in it.

Obamacare: Surprise after surprise after surprise after surprise.

Nobody would by it because nobody could afford it.

The fact that health insurance has been tied to an employee's benefit package for decades has made the real cost of health insurance hidden to that employee. Same thing with automatic tax withholding. People have become too lazy to care about such things and Government is more than willing to remove that burden from you....for a fee.

Bringing these costs out to the forefront may indeed lead to a lowering of all healthcare costs.