{"id":2581,"date":"2020-04-21T11:46:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T11:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2020-04-21T11:46:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T11:46:25","slug":"the-real-reason-the-u-s-has-employer-sponsored-health-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2581","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe single largest tax expenditure<\/a> in the United States is for employer-based health insurance. It\u2019s even more than the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, this exclusion cost the federal government about $260 billion<\/a> in lost income and payroll taxes. This is significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act each year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s take a hypothetical married pediatrician with a couple of children living in Indiana who makes $125,000 (which is below average<\/a>). Let\u2019s also assume his family insurance plan costs $15,000 (which is below average as well).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tax break the family would get for insurance is worth over $6,200. That\u2019s far more than a similar-earning family would get in terms of a subsidy on the exchanges. The tax break alone could fund about two people on Medicaid. Moreover, the more one makes, the more one saves at the expense of more spending by the government. The less one makes, the less of a benefit one receives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The system also induces people to spend more money<\/a> on health insurance than other things, most likely increasing overall health care spending. This includes less employer spending on wages, and as health insurance premiums have increased sharply in the last 15 years or so, wages have been rather flat. Many economists believe that employer-sponsored health insurance is hurting Americans\u2019 paychecks<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other countries with private insurance systems, but none that rely so heavily on employer-sponsored insurance. There are almost no economists I can think of who wouldn\u2019t favor decoupling insurance from employment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/09\/05\/upshot\/the-real-reason-the-us-has-employer-sponsored-health-insurance.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe single largest tax expenditure in the United States is for employer-based health insurance. It\u2019s even more than the mortgage interest deduction. In 2017, this exclusion cost the federal government about $260 billion in lost income and payroll taxes. This is significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act each year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s take a hypothetical married pediatrician with a couple of children living in Indiana who makes $125,000 (which is below average). Let\u2019s also assume his family insurance plan costs $15,000 (which is below average as well).<\/p>\n

The tax break the family would get for insurance is worth over $6,200. That\u2019s far more than a similar-earning family would get in terms of a subsidy on the exchanges. The tax break alone could fund about two people on Medicaid. Moreover, the more one makes, the more one saves at the expense of more spending by the government. The less one makes, the less of a benefit one receives.<\/p>\n

The system also induces people to spend more money on health insurance than other things, most likely increasing overall health care spending. This includes less employer spending on wages, and as health insurance premiums have increased sharply in the last 15 years or so, wages have been rather flat. Many economists believe that employer-sponsored health insurance is hurting Americans\u2019 paychecks.<\/p>\n

There are other countries with private insurance systems, but none that rely so heavily on employer-sponsored insurance. There are almost no economists I can think of who wouldn\u2019t favor decoupling insurance from employment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[715,81,334,80,73,50],"class_list":["post-2581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-employer-sponsered-health-insurance","tag-health","tag-health-insurance","tag-health-system","tag-healthcare","tag-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2582,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}