That makes no sense. If your employer paid your rent, would that not be compensation to you? After all, you need housing even more than you need health care. Sure, there’s ancillary benefits to the employer from paying your health insurance. But that’s true of your salary as well. Your salary also makes sure you keep showing up for work. From the employer’s perspective it makes no difference. Health insurance premiums spent on you don’t result in a durable capital asset the employer can then use or sell. The only reason employers pay $1,000 in premiums versus $1,000 in salary is that it’s more tax advantaged for the employer (and, now, the ACA makes them do it).

The “distortion” comes from excluding benefits from compensation. It makes it impossible to determine what you’re actually measuring—the share of total income going to employees, or rising costs in one particular sector (that the employer has nothing to do with).

If they only paid my rent in company-owned housing, it would be pretty strange for me to say my employer pays for me house, no strings attached.

But it’s not company owned housing (the premiums they pay to the insurance company is cash out; they don’t get any part of it back as they would if the insurance company were company owned).

And compensation doesn’t have to be “no strings attached” to count as compensation, especially if it is something you were going to buy anyway. With limited exceptions (e.g. live-in nannies), employer-paid housing is taxable as compensation.

There's an element of control that other posters are getting at here. One of the fundamental tenets of a market economy is that consumers get to make decisions on their own behalf when it comes to how they spend their money. If they're not making the decisions, is it actually theirs? There's a pretty big principal-agent problem as soon as you start saying "Well, that money is being spent on your behalf, therefore it's yours." (Ironically, the same problem occurs on the other side of the political aisle with single-payer, government funded health care.)

This is also related to the point you made about possible structural problems with the health care and education industries. Maybe if the consumer could actually choose their health insurer and provider, and there were no exclusive contracts between those two sides of the market, and no barriers to entry for starting a new insurer (and none other than necessary medical licensing of employees for starting a new provider), and providers were required to provide transparent information about pricing and outcomes, healthcare wouldn't be such a clusterfuck of an industry. These are all basic prerequisites for a functioning market, but none of them are present in health care.

What a bizarre comment. Couldn’t you say your salary is also not yours by the same logic? After all, it’s just being paid to the “warm body” in your position rather than “you”.

I read the comment differently and agree with the gp. I'm not allowed to forgo health insurance and take it as cash. I have no agency over the compensation arrangement besides choosing one of a limited amount of options provided to me by my employer.

You’re not allowed to do that, not because the company wouldn’t gladly negotiate that with you, but because it’s probably illegal under ERISA.

I do not think they are allowed to negotiate away your right to participate in the employer-sponsored plan.

So, to be clear, you’re saying that because you can’t choose to receive cash instead of insurance that means it’s not “compensation to the person” (to quote the OP)? That’s not an argument that makes sense to me.

Employees pay for health insurance to attract workers. There are few health care interventions that materially effect someone's ability to do their work that an employee would not pay out of their own pocket.

Not only does the cost of insurance and benefits accrue directly to the employee and absolutely counts as part of total compensation, but so does the employer share of payroll taxes, and even things like health & safety improvements in the workplace like that ergonomic chair you may be sitting in. All of these things redirect parts of the “fully loaded cost” of an employee away from your paycheck, and studying them helps explain why median real paychecks have not grown.

Employer provided healthcare arose ouf of WWII wage caps as a way of competing for workers. They remain a major part of the compensation package that many workers look at when choicing an employer.

If an employer were to take the extra money they are spending on healthcare and instead pay it in wages, most workers would be (even more) mad at the lowering quality of their insurance coverage (especially considering employers gennerally can get a better deal than individuals).

> You (the employee) never have control of any capital with which to shop around for the best deal.

You can always choose which career you want to pursue, at least in theory...