re: Affordable Care Act. HAHAHAHAHA!!!

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My cancer survivor wife has only one option. One. We’ve been told no thx by every large company in the country. Yalll need to fix that or STFU…..

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But if you liked your insurance…

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Not directly, but employers are sponsoring health insurance BECAUSE it’s tax deductible.

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The practice started because of WWII mandated salary freezes. Employers couldn't offer raises, so they offered HI instead. The fact that you can write it off makes no difference to the employer (although it might to the employee, see below).

Salaries are also tax deductible. It makes no tax difference to the employer whether he's writing off your salary or writing off his contribution to your health insurance. That's not why this practice started.

Which brings me to this: Unless I'm not understanding you, you seem to be mixing up your motivations with your solutions. If I'm reading you correctly, the solution you proposed would ostensibly cause a motivation for individuals to reject employer sponsored health insurance because they wouldn't want to pay taxes on it.

I don't know why you think it would result in "hefty raises," (which employees would also have to pay taxes on if it actually happened) but that's another debate.

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allow people to go buy what they want.

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They can do that now, and they can write those premiums off. Nothing about taxing employer sponsored health insurance would change the opportunity to buy your own (and write it off).

And yet, people overwhelmingly choose employer sponsored insurance. You know why? Because it's usually cheaper than what they could buy on their own, and the reason why is what I typed above. Companies negotiating for 100 or 1000 or 10,000 employees have bargaining power that one individual doesn't have. Thus my EDIT point above. Employer sponsored insurance actually resists price increases better than individual or government sponsored health insurance.

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I believe if this happened we’d see a lot of people buy cheap catastrophic insurance and directly pay for basic care.

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Again, there is no reason based on what you've posted that I can see any special motivation for people to do this that they don't already have. Also, someone would have to get rid of the ACA—or at least the provision in it that sets the requirements for being eligible for catastrophic-only insurance—because right now only certain people are legally able to get it. THAT'S why you don't see more people doing it. It's illegal for most people right now.

Look, if y'all want to argue that historically, employer sponsored insurance was the Trojan Horse that smuggled in a health care culture built around 3rd party pay, and 3rd party pay always artificially drives up prices and consumption, that's fine. I'll agree with you on that.

But that's not the original claim on this thread. The original claim is that there is something unique about getting your insurance from your employer that drives prices up, and I don't think there is, and nobody has posted anything yet that has changed my mind on that.

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It pays for Rx and Dr's visits but it would be a lot cheaper to pay them out of pocket. Mine for me and 1 kid is $1,500.00 a month, company pays 2/3'rds me 1'rd. 8% increase this year

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Try a wife a 3 kids all out of my pocket. I'm tempted to just put that payment aside in an account and roll the dice.

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That will unfortunately lead to political pressure that will lead to government run healthcare.

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This was the plan all along. There are many people on this very board who are still around who called it back when it passed into law.

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Salaries are also tax deductible

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No, I didn’t make myself clear; they are tax deductible (or rather, not taxed) to the employee. Obviously it’s an expense to the employer.

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the solution you proposed would ostensibly cause a motivation for individuals to reject employer sponsored health insurance because they wouldn't want to pay taxes on it.

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Yes, exactly.

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I don't know why you think it would result in "hefty raises,

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Because the market would demand them. Employees and employers would very quickly renegotiate, and the cost of medical insurance would be replaced by the cost of increased wages. The net result would be about the same for the employer, but much better for the employee who could choose to spend the extra money as he pleased rather than being forced to consume health insurance.

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Nothing about taxing employer sponsored health insurance would change the opportunity to buy your own (and write it off).

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It wouldn’t change the opportunity, but it would sure change the incentive. A current employee, who receives heavily subsidized insurance from his employer, is not likely to go out and buy another policy.

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And yet, people overwhelmingly choose employer sponsored insurance. You know why? Because it's usually cheaper than what they could buy on their own, and the reason why is what I typed above. Companies negotiating for 100 or 1000 or 10,000 employees have bargaining power that one individual doesn't have.

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The reason is because an employee can receive a benefit, albeit an inefficient one, and not pay income taxes on it.

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Again, there is no reason based on what you've posted that I can see any special motivation for people to do this that they don't already have.

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There is a clear motivation. They would be rejecting something (mostly) free for something they have to pay money for, and without the compensation of increased salary, which they would get if it was done en masse via the feds taxing the benefit.

ETA: A real life example is that when I was a business owner, with thousands of employees, some would elect to pass on health insurance because their spouse had it. This was a boon for the company, but we gave no additional salary for this because the employee could change his election at any time. And BTW, even with thousands of employees, we had no leverage to negotiate the cost of the plan. Maybe that’s different for massive companies, but we were a solid mid-size company without negotiating power. We could make trade-offs with them but not beat down the price.

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The question no one is asking is why even with the extra tax money the ACA was more expensive then it was pre subsidy

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Seems like just more or less inflation and a bit of increase because of better machines and shite hospitalls and doctors can now send you to. I guess you can decline and ask for the machine made in 1987 if you want.

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n New York a lower middle class person can get a sold policy for a couple of hundred dollars a month

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trust me, others are paying for it.

But that is not your or her concern.

Capitalism does not work when it comes to car crashes and emergency rooms.