From Employer Coverage to Single Payer Health Insurance This holiday season I’ve heard several tales of woe from working class acquaintances, mostly self-employed, about Obamacare: how they are just above the subsidy cutoff and would rather pay the fine than buy expensive individual policies, or how they are just below and can’t afford to put in more hours per week. I can understand why there is a lot of disappointment with the Democrats. So what about single payer? Along with free public higher ed, it’s supposed to be the leitmotif of the resurgence of the left, with even moderate politicians signing on, or claiming to, to save their skins. And I’m all for it too. But a big political obstacle is widespread employer-based health coverage, a benefit that
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From Employer Coverage to Single Payer Health Insurance
This holiday season I’ve heard several tales of woe from working class acquaintances, mostly self-employed, about Obamacare: how they are just above the subsidy cutoff and would rather pay the fine than buy expensive individual policies, or how they are just below and can’t afford to put in more hours per week. I can understand why there is a lot of disappointment with the Democrats.
So what about single payer? Along with free public higher ed, it’s supposed to be the leitmotif of the resurgence of the left, with even moderate politicians signing on, or claiming to, to save their skins. And I’m all for it too.
But a big political obstacle is widespread employer-based health coverage, a benefit that would disappear under a universal system. As a public employee, I have coverage of this sort myself, and it’s a big part of my overall compensation. How do we fold the millions with adequate-to-good health plans into a new system financed through taxes?
I have an idea. As single payer goes into effect, require every employer to publicly report how much it pays in the form of contributions to employee health insurance, documented by its payment record over the past twelve months. The health care law would then mandate that this sum be returned as added wage payments to employees for some transitional period (such as six months) or the term of the employment contract, whichever is greater. Ideally the law would specify a reasonably progressive apportionment of this payment across the workforce, such as equal lump sums. At the end of the transition, wages increases and decreases would fall under the same employment law rules, such as they are, as before.
From the worker’s point of view, there would be no loss under the switch to single-payer, even if existing coverage were gold-plated; it would generate that much more wage income. To the extent that the new system can reduce America’s bloated medical costs, workers could even come out ahead over time. From the employer’s perspective it should be revenue-neutral, and changes in the composition of the compensation package should have little effect on HR. In principle, then, it ought to address most of the political concern over how we can get from here—a fragmented, employment based health care system with both bright spots and gaping holes—to there.