Here is another must read from John Stossel.

According to the new “ABC News” poll on health care, Americans are eager to have the government force employers to provide heath insurance: “Nearly eight in 10 favor a federal requirement that all employers offer insurance to their full-time workers.”

Why?! Do our employers pay for our food, clothing, or shelter? If they did, why would that be good? Having my health care tied to my boss invites him to snoop into my private health issues, and if I change jobs, I lose coverage.

Employer-paid health insurance isn’t free. It just means we get insurance instead of higher salaries. I’d rather have the cash and buy my own insurance. Companies only provide it because of a World War II-era tax break that never went away.

He brings up a point that I frequently use against health insurance.  Plans typically cover a suite of tests and services for any particular procedure.  A good example that I have experience with (although my wife did the work) is the delivery of a baby.  One of the things that insurance covered - and consequently was provided by the hospital with or without request - was food for the patient.  Understandably my wife is not a big fan of hospital food, so I would run out to a restaurant and get her a meal.  But the hospital still delivers a tray of food to her room.  Why?  Because insurance is paying for it and no one is going to cry foul.  I assure you that if the patients were billed directly for the food there might not be so much waste.

The first question people ask a doctor who recommends a test is not “Do I really need that?” but “Does my insurance cover it?” Insurance raises costs by insulating consumers from medicine’s real prices.

Suppose you had grocery insurance. With your employer paying 80 percent of the bill, you would fill the cart with lobster and filet mignon. Everything would cost more because demand would rise and supermarkets would stop running sales. Why should they — when their customers barely care about the price?

Read the rest for yourself.

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 5:47 am and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.