"There are concerns that employers will be gaming this new system and taking less and less responsibility for their workers," said Sonya Schwartz, program director at the National Academy for State Health Policy. "This may make employers think twice." linkWhy is health care the responsibility of employers? I continue to be amazed at the way liberals (pretend to) think.
From what I read some good length of time ago, health care was a bone thrown to unions striking - or threatening to strike - during WWII.
ReplyDeleteBy making health care benefits a business expense, rather then compensation, a significant part of the cost of the benefit was passed on to the tax payer. The union members got a nice benefit at a bargain price as did the employer with only the tax payers being screwed.
I hadn't heard about the striking, but the rest comports with what I know.
ReplyDeleteWith wage controls during WWII (so workers couldn't go to another company for higher pay, and possibly put the first (defense contractor) company in a bind), companies still found a way to attract workers. They could provide "perquisites" or "benefits", which were not limited by law.
So by trying to get around crazy federal wage controls, companies ended up hanging themselves. This entire problem was created by *government*.
Not to put too fine a point on it but the problem wasn't so much a creation of government as of the creation of special rules for special people. In essence, the creation of a privileged class of citizenry who, by virtue of the political power they wielded, could squeeze unearned wealth from the balance of the citizenry.
ReplyDeleteMy beef with your formulation is that by anthropomorphizing government it makes government the bad guy. It isn't. It's the misuse of government power that's the "bad guy" and in the larger sense it's the fault of the electorate for not preventing the passage of laws that create privileged classes of people. We have met the enemy and he is us, not some guy named "government".
People ceded to government, or people in government unjustly usurped, the power to do what was done. I shouldn't need to make that distinction here.
ReplyDeleteSpoken from someone who knows nothing of actually purchasing on the open market for health care and has always had/will always have govt/employer funded health care.
ReplyDeleteYou can make your snarky comment, but with what specifically that I wrote about do you disagree?
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Allen.
ReplyDeleteI accept your capitulation :-)
ReplyDeleteDarren, you're entirely correct ... with wages frozen, health care became a carrot. Health care, overall, would be much cheaper if people got to choose who they paid to, rather than being forced to go with the employer's block choice. More competition for patients = lower prices.
ReplyDelete