Untie Employment And Healthcare
@DWatney sent me a post echoing my thoughts on employment being tied to health care. Russ Roberts posts at Cafe Hayek:
It is insane that we get our health care from our employers. That happens because we have given a tax advantage to in-kind compensation such as health care. It's a horrible idea and it leads people to complain about our employers deciding what health care we can receive. Our employers are just a conduit for government mandates, rent-seeking and inefficiency related to health care. What the government has done is tax-advantage health care via employers and then tell them what has to be covered. So the real outrage is that because of this, the government mandates the mix of my compensation package, biasing it toward a luxury health-care package that is the result of special interest clamoring.
Most employees think that their health insurance is free. They don't understand that salary levels are lower to pay for their insurance. The employer writes the check, but the value comes out of the employee's production and salary.
If individuals could buy health insurance on the same tax-free basis as employers, employer plans would mostly disappear and salaries would adjust higher to provide the income to buy insurance individually.
Company Paid Health Insurance Lowers Your Salary
Andrew_M_Garland at February 26, 2012 11:21 AM
My sister is taking a job and is losing about $5K per year salary because she is being nice enough to cover her soon-to-be-ex. But the cost to cover just her children would let the employer raise her salary about $5K. Adding in the STBE costs about $4K for the company.
Anonymous Coward at February 26, 2012 1:16 PM
Leave a comment