Do you think all U.S. business's should be required to offer Health insurance to all their employees?

Question

Health cost are very high. If an employer is required to offer health insurance everyone will have access to Health insurance and an employer can get the policy at a group rate. I think the buisness should make the employee pay the full premium which is at a group rate or the Employee can pay for part or all as a fringe benifit. Do you think this would be a good idea? Why? or Why not?

that is why I said that the employee would pay the premium unless the employer wanted to as a fringe benifit

Answer 1

No, because a business can't GET a group policy, unless they have a minimum percentage of enrollment. And if the employee has to pay, they most likely aren't going to take this option, unless they are too high risk to get a policy on their own - which skews the average health of the group policy to Not Good, and raises EVERYONE'S rates, which makes the healthy people leave the group because it's cheaper to get an individual policy, which tilts the average health downwards even FARTHER, etc.

It's a bad spiral.

I think that the less governmental interference we have, the better. Every time the government sticks its fingers into the way businesses run, it messes things up.

Answer 2

No. I think our system of employers providing health care coverage is antiquated. We need to unhook this connection of employer and health care. Perhaps it made sense when we were an industrial economy and companies were essentially providing coverage to make sure that the employees that were getting injured on the job were able to heal and get back to work, but that's not our situation anymore. The social contract between employer and employee has been broken. Why should it be incumbent on your employer to pay to provide you with insurance? Itmakes no more sense than requiring them to pay your homeowners and auto insurance would. It's a weird system that's totally random and I wager that it's probably not going to be around too much longer. We're already seeing companies canceling pension plans. Mark my words: health insurance is next on the chopping block.

What we need is a transparent system of healthcare pricing where people can make informed decisions about what level of healthcare they are willing to purchase on an a la carte basis instead of a system where you basically hand a doctor a blank check and ask them to pick the most appropriate course of treatment. What other industry gets to completely avoid disclosing pricing until after the invoice is sent?

Answer 3

That would be nice in employers did offer health care, but realistically, health care in US is way too expensive. Take a look at Ford and GM. They have health care and the cost of health care is far greater than what they spend on metals. So they keep firing people or closing plants to cut the cost down.

Then there are businesses that don't make much profits and having health care will run them out of business and you can expect the American economy to go downward.

Answer 4

It would be cost prohibitive for smaller employers. Half of them would go out of business with your plan.