[Off-topic discussion]
Our employer-based health care system evolved in a haphazard manner after WWII, when soldiers were coming home and taking work in an economy that was going gangbusters. Employers began offering health care benefits as additional incentive to attract the best workers. And it just grew from there. It's a stupid system, based on a profit model (basically betting on whether or not someone will get ill!), is inefficient as hell and does, as Dragonetti points out, keep people in shitty jobs just for the sake of not losing their health care coverage.
As a sole proprietor of a small business, I can tell you that scarcity of health care coverage is a HUGE drag on entrepreneurship in the US. I am so glad we've finally effected a change, and despite the dubious roll-out of the website, I think we'll find it an enormous improvement over the long haul.
[/Off-topic discussion]
Our employer-based health care system evolved in a haphazard manner after WWII, when soldiers were coming home and taking work in an economy that was going gangbusters. Employers began offering health care benefits as additional incentive to attract the best workers. And it just grew from there. It's a stupid system, based on a profit model (basically betting on whether or not someone will get ill!), is inefficient as hell and does, as Dragonetti points out, keep people in shitty jobs just for the sake of not losing their health care coverage.
As a sole proprietor of a small business, I can tell you that scarcity of health care coverage is a HUGE drag on entrepreneurship in the US. I am so glad we've finally effected a change, and despite the dubious roll-out of the website, I think we'll find it an enormous improvement over the long haul.
[/Off-topic discussion]
