There is absolutely no legitimate reason for employers to be required to pay health insurance. It's idiotic.
They might as well require dairy farmers or red-headed athletes to pay everyone's health insurance. It makes as much sense.
Ideally, everyone would be responsible for their own health insurance.
And why does health insurance pay for every little ailment that afflicts you. That would be like home owners insurance that pays to fix your garage door when it wears out or car insurance that pays to change your oil. No wonder that stuff costs so much.
Who paid for your health coverage when you were in the service? Would it not be those dairy farmers and red-headed atheletes?
And are you paying for your own health coverage now? Or is it part of your salary, and do you not get the benefit of group discounts not available to the average knucklehead who is either self employed or working for some company that doesn't provide health coverage.
This is a problem that goes beyond our knee jerk conservatism. For many people this is a life and death situation. We need to take that into consideration.
I am leaning towards a workers compensation type system for general health coverage. A cost of doing business. Businesses are required to have workers compensation coverage. It would not be that much more of a burden to also require either a payroll tax to cover healthcare or a requirement that they also provide healthcare coverage.
I'm basically thinking out loud here, but this is something we need to think about.
Here is your rising health care costs in a few short phrases.
Hospitals are required to help certainly every dying person.
Those hospitals incur costs.
They past the costs on to insurance companies and the rest of us.
Illegals pour across the border.
The hospitals become more burdened and hike their costs.
And the cycle continues.
We need to either tell Hospitals to let people die(by telling them they can't pass on costs of goodwill care)... or we have to force everyone to have health insurance.
Which sounds better to you?
By the way even without the illegal problem you still have 41 million uninsured Americans who also contribute a big dollar amount in costs to the system.
I basically agree with you but your analogy is faulty. Anybody can diagnose a broken garage door. Diagnosing health problems requires years of study and practice.