The programs we have now enable people to scam the system. And the people in charge of doling out the money have a vested interest in making sure there is someone to dole it out to. They need a job to, you know.
Employer-provided health insurance scams the worker out of thousands of dollars of income. Our employers negotiate with the insurers; we have no input in the process. We don't even know how much our employer is paying for our coverage. How can a consumer make a rational purchasing decision without price transparency? And should we decline the employer-provided option, we don't get the employer's contribution put back in our paycheck.
If we decline coverage we get back the few bucks we pay, which is not the bulk of the cost. The average amount paid by employers to provide an employee's health insurance is something like $10,000/year.
The insurers know they have the employers by the balls because there's nowhere else to get health insurance.
Employees get suckered into the deal because they don't even know how much their employer pays for their insurance, they can't get that money in wages from their employer if they decline insurance. And Congress sweetens the deal by taking the employee's small insurance contribution from pre-tax dollars. Employees see "my health insurance is only $50/paycheck" but never see the $250/paycheck contribution their employer makes.
Employees save a few bucks at tax-time in return for our employers paying thousands we don't even know about to our health insurance companies.
It's about the exact opposite of a free market, as can be seen simply by looking at the outrageous cost. If you want to "buy" new health insurance you have to find a new job, or settle for one of the other employer-provided options you get to choose... but only once a year during Open Enrollment.
It's so bad, even the variety of socialist approaches seen in the other modern countries have much lower cost.
