Why is health insurance provided by employers in the USA? Why healthcare but not housing or other necessities? Why don't employers just pay us the money they would spend on our health insurance so we can buy our own policies that are independent of their company? I suspect they want to make it harder for people to quit. I also suspect the government is causing it with tax breaks or something. I just want to be able to go to a doctor like it's any other service, without having to keep track of 1000 account logins and bullshit like HSA withdrawal rates.
Employers get bulk pricing when they pool their policies together. That's why they offer it. You can go buy your own plan from a third party, but chances are equivalent coverage will be higher priced. Even Obamacare (which isn't really equivalent to most employer plans anyway).
Charles Peterson
Yeah, they banned that years ago... company towns, company stores, companies owned your ass.
Henry Nelson
Because it’s the single largest tax break in the US code. They can pay you in insurance without having to pay payroll tax on it. Been the case since shortly after ww2. Government wanted to intensify insurance adoption
Dylan Collins
>Why is health insurance provided by employers in the USA? Because they are the ones who have an interest in keeping you healthy enough to work.
Eli Roberts
And yeah it’s all tax code. Every other thing you mentioned would cause them to be taxed. Thi s is why healthcare is almost 20 cents of every single dollar spent in the us
Dominic Sanders
Health insurance via employers arose as a result of WWII era wage controls, a part of general price controls combating wartime inflation. With an already depleted workforce, employers needed to have some way of outbidding other employers for talent so they tacked on health benefits to get around the wage controls. This became an institution of sorts and would be very difficult to abolish save gov intervention.
Leo Reyes
this.
Employers have a lot more negotiating power because they can say "if you give us a good deal we will bring you 1000 new customers right now".
Health insurance companies have no reason to negotiate with a private individual. Not worth the time.
>Why don't employers just pay us the money they would spend on our health insurance so we can buy our own policies that are independent of their company? Because they get group discounts
Elijah Richardson
Lmao...he thinks we get health insurance. I have to buy antibiotics from a veterinarian.
Aaron Green
Only the crazy answer here is ever considered the real answer
Angel Johnson
I agree with you completely. Your employer should proved housing and dock your pay. They should also provide a company store and dock you pay. In fact, they should require you to live there 24/7 like they do in China.
Brody Russell
To add to this the Feds had actually capped pay and companies essentially had to find a way around that by offering benefits that weren't actual money.
Because health insurance gets some benefit from group policies. Housing wouldn't make much sense unless you built company dorms or something and people want more choice than that.
Ayden Hernandez
Incentive to get a job and be a good goy maybe?
Ethan Bell
Because during WW II companies were forced to limint pay by the government, and so the companies increased their benefits, such as health insurance to attract the best employees.
John Cox
This is the correct answer below, OP. Government interference during WW2, employers had to use insurance cuz they couldn't pay them more.
Samuel Adams
providing healthcare benefits lowers wages. So adding housing would also lower wages. It would be dumb to regulate where and how people could live.
Healthcare is more expensive if you don't go through the employer. I'm not sure why this is. But it can be difficult to qualify for decent coverage on their own
>Why don't employers just pay us the money they would spend on our health insurance so we can buy our own policies that are independent of their company?
Because Obamacare literally made that illegal and the penalties for doing so are fucking astronomical, because it was a law written by retards to socially engineer shit and steal money for gibsmedats, not make sure people are insured.
Jose Hughes
My niggas
Lincoln Perry
>Why healthcare but not housing or other necessities? My employer provides that, though. >tfw basically a serf at this point
Employers want talent so they entice prospective employees with perks, not just base salary. They'll offer all kinds of things including pet-health care, unlimited personal days off, free lunches and snacks, along with gym memberships. As stated elsewhere, companies/employers get better rates. If the company doesn't offer healthcare then they will boost the base salary to offset it.
Isaiah Bennett
Imagine living in an era where employers competed for American labor.
Why else do all the elites want to let in illegal immigranta? They're trying to scab the US labor regualtions.
Nolan Flores
Because it used to be that way before Obamacare, and Obamacare was written to be a "smarter," heavily subsidized, carefully engineered-by-experts direct improvement on the way things worked before Obamacare using all of the assumptions of the flawed system, but that means everything has to continue being based on that forever now because Obamacare made it the law that the shitty system has to continue forever or otherwise the whole health care economy will implode. >tl;dr: Our health care system is based on what 51 Senate Democrats and 219 House Democrats could bring themselves to vote for in March 2010 because the media said they had to pass something.
Xavier Clark
>drug costs 37 cents to manufacture >put patent on it >sell it for 1300 a month >bill insurance >insurance premiums inflate >based on freelance income 750 a month for health insurance
Average cost of getting a drug developed, studied, approved is $1 Billion. If they can't recoop their money they won't do it. Part of why we're seeing more medically resistant infections is because drug companies can't make their money back before the bacteria evolve to resist it, so they've stopped developing new antibiotics.
A Brief History Lesson: many many years ago, your "employer" would see to all your needs, food housing, clothing, education, recreation etc, it was called SLAVERY.
then the "employers" discovered that the frequent slave revolts were unprofitable, so thye eased the chains and created Serfdom and the Feudal Model, whereby you're responsible for your own shit, but you have to render unto your liege 40-80% of your harvest, you cant leave, and he still gets to impose upon you many restrictions
then the serfs started noticing that Free men lived much better lives, so they resisted serfdom, and eventually created the Mercantile system where you're responsible for your own shit, and market forces and skill at serving the market determine whether you win or lose.this was a good thing.
this evolved into "capitalism", which lifted more people out of poverty than any other system ever devised. in america every once in a while somebody would try to bring back the old ways, and they built "company towns' where your lived in your employer's little fiefdom, and from your wages was drawn the costs of everything provided, and you could only buy at "the company store" which ensures eternal indebtedness and virtual serfdom. this is now illegal.
in ww2 FDR capped wages so employers had to use other enticements to draw the vastly constricted labor pool, including "free healthcare" it was PART OF YOUR PAY (this is where the first "health insurance" program came from, google "Kaiser") now the system is all fucked up, unbound from market forces, and is treated like 'free shit' so its value is irrelevant. morons like you fucked it up, and now you wonder what went wrong. go fuck yourself.
Benjamin Russell
Thanks for all the replies, guys. Some of you misinterpreted me. I wasn't advocating for the gov't or employers to provide healthcare. Just the opposite, in fact. I was asking why it is the way it is, because it seems like the current system is very inefficient. And it seems like I was correct in suspecting the gov't is behind it. I also think all the regulations and restrictions surrounding the healthcare industry contribute to the price, hence why people fly overseas for medical tourism.
So to summarize... The government printed money to pay for Jewish wars, which caused inflation, so they instituted salary caps, inspiring employers to offer healthcare instead. That system became subsidized through tax breaks and further through Obamacare.
Jason Powell
the SECOND pill costs 37 cents, the first pill costs $2 billion to produce. you are a moron. > muh nikes only cost $2 of child labor to make Y dey cozt $200? the factory wasnt just sitting there untill sombey named "Robert Nike just found it and started making shoes. the design of the shoes costs $ the testing of the design costs $ getting some niggerball player to endorse it costs $ building the factory costs $ acquiring and shipping the raw materials costs $ even the child laor doesnt just cost $2, thats what the child laborer gets. the company also has to pay the bribes, kickbacks, wide boys, spivs, organized crime (other than the chinese govt) and local bureaucrats just to have the factory inside their feifdom. all that costs big $ then they have to ship those ugly brightly colored shoes across the sea from china ($) pay the longshoremen, truckers warehousemen, distributors and store owners ($$$) they even have to pay the hipster who reads his script about how great your "performance" will be when you put on these nike air-douchebags, why youll be dunking on lebron in no time!this also costs $ the company also has to pay its shareholders ($$) and still somehow turn a profit so they can hire a queer to design the next generation of brightly colored marshmallows and pay some other niggerball player to endorse them, and the cycle starts all over again.
