Posted on 09/12/2009 7:34:40 PM PDT by Rebam98
From a practical standpoint, however, as usual, free market ideology wins as well. As a typical American, who has a mortgage and pays taxes, I still want to end employer based health care. The reason is because I want more choice.
(Excerpt) Read more at amberpawlik.com ...
Employer-based health care is itself a distortion of the free market created by government policy. It’s also a large part of the reason why health insurance isn’t portable. I don’t understand how some people can claim the free market has failed, because we haven’t had a free market in health care (and many other areas) in some time.
If the RNC has any brains they would propose a flat tax with only one deduction for health care. Kill (figuratively) “K” street lobbying and help solve health care in one fell swoop. Then again, I just woke up from a dream and had the key to Hillary’s lock box to boot....
I have been saying this for a long time!
I dont buy my car insurance from my employer... why should my employet have a ‘health insurance’ department
END IT
Give the tax benefit to people.
Stop FORCING insurance companies companies to pay for Viagra
I bet if it was NOT a law that they had to cover it Viagra would be $5 a bottle instead of per pill (there is somthing called ‘demand’ and ‘mass prouction’)
Employer-based health insurance is not mandatory. People don’t have to take it.
It’s also a rough way of containing risk. If you’re not too sick to keep a job, you qualify.
Good idea but it will never happen. McCain actually campaigned on this.
Big Free market reforms will not get passed for the same reason as Big socialist reforms, someone will lose something.
> Employer-based health insurance is not mandatory. People don’t have to take it.
Right, you don’t have to take it, but to take out an individual policy on your own is cost prohibitive.
The problem is the rate structure that gives low cost to groups and high cost to individuals. If your employer simply gave you the money to purchase your own policy, you couldn’t buy it for the money you get. We don’t need government health care, we need to end the policy of group rates and have individual rates that are reasonable and similar to the group rates offered through employment.
That’s why it’s known as a “golden handcuff” in America. It’s a way of attracting and retaining valuable employees that the employer has invested large sums of training resources and expensive time. At least that’s the way it used to be...
I understand that libertarian oriented folks like this idea. I am sympatheic.
However, the concept of “group insurance” is still an extremely valuable one. Spreading risk is the essence of what insurance is about, and insurance is a pretty good way of handling financial risk over a group.
This stuff is very hard to discuss with anyone who does not grasp the basics of risk spread and insurance overall. As, very unintentionly, condensending as that sounds, that is just the way it is.
BTW, I do see employer-employee relationships as a type of “slavery”, but one really can not argue about the principles of group insurance and risk spread. For those who see it, work with it, and understand it, it is like arguing about Gravity, as a “theory”.
It’s like, “yeah, it’s a ‘theory’, but it’s also so obvious...”.
Sorry, but that is the way it is. Talk with anyone who does Property Insurance (commercial, auto, homeowners, etc.) I must confess that these folks understand it better than most group insurance folks.
P.S. It’s also easier for insurers to spread risk across a group and thus not have to screen out new insureds, or exclude pre-existing conditions in the underwriting process to protect thin profit margins. Administrative expenses are also vastly reduced to boot!!!
People don’t have to take employer based health care but employers are forced to provide the option!
Used to be. You're just a number and can be laid off in a heart beat these days. Plus, the more you know, the more expensive you are. If the company can outsource operations to India or Taiwan or where ever, your number is up.
Get companies out of the insurance buying business and remove healthcare insurance from the employer's ledger. Perhaps American workers will be more competitive if their insurance isn't yet another cost of hiring them.
“However, the concept of “group insurance” is still an extremely valuable one. Spreading risk is the essence of what insurance is about, and insurance is a pretty good way of handling financial risk over a group.”
Right “group insurance” is important. However, why does a “group” composed of workers at a company of varying ages, health, recreational activities, education, etc., be a more statistical reliable estimate of risk than “groups” of people across the state lines of same age, similar life styles, etc. Couldn’t insurance companies define their own “groups” and offer policies based on a larger number of people? Wouldn’t that be more statistically reliable? Wouldn’t that decrease risk to the insurance company and wouldn’t that be cheaper for the individual?
I've always wondered why the opt out is so paltry. It seems fruadulent.
I need to stop being forced to pay for pregnancies, flu shots, birth control, sex drugs, etc.
In the 1960’s voluntary medical costs were not covered. Kept costs down.
Is it state and/or federal law? I really don’t know.
What's this country coming to??? I know... Commonism!!!
This whole employer-based health insurance system got started during WWII when wages were frozen in a very tight labor market. Employers who couldn’t raise wages to attract skilled labor did it with untaxed fringe benefits - like free employer paid health insurance.
After the war, employers kept this system as the labor market continued to be tight and these fringe benefits were not taxed.
Gradually, the costs began to rise and employers started laying off the costs to the employees, but the premiums were still untaxed as income. Now, most employees pay the lions share of their health insurance costs with before tax dollars, and employers kick in a percentage. A minority of employers still provide paid health care, but these are fewer each year. Unions have theit own deals, and generally offer “free” health insurace to their members.
Of course, all this is “free” or “employer paid” only in a hypothetical sense as all money paid out to third parties by an employer on behalf of his employees would otherwise be avialable for direct payment to the employees.
The advantage of the employer-based plans to employees is that the premiums are not taxed.
If the premiums were taxed as income, the major benefit of staying with the employer plans would be removed.
Group plans would still exist, but they would be based on a multitude of affinity groups, which could obviously include employees of a company, but also might include various professional associations, clubs, or simply created artificial groups. There would be plethora of options available, probably at a lower cost, if insurance companies could compete across state lines and with plans with different structures, coverages, etc., tailored to suit various target markets.
The government would not need to be involved except to enforce laws against criminal behavior like fraud.
Meanwhile we strugggle along with a plan that is an accident of history. For what its worth, Britain’s NHS got its start exactly the same way during wartime, and now it is a festering cancer.
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