Employer provided insurance should be outlawed, and everyone should be forced to go to healthcare.gov. Then there would be enough lived on the marketplace for competing insurance to stay in business and the more competing insurers there are, the more pressure there will be to keep premiums lower.

interesting idea, but probably even less viable than full universal healthcare politically. individual rates are not really the true cost of insurance. they're just the rates you get when you can't negotiate as a group. you would lower the standard of living for pretty much everyone with a full-time job and give them nothing in exchange.

Employers don’t get lower health insurance premiums because they are big enough to negotiate. They might get them if they happen to employ healthier people than average and if the employees are on the younger side, hence experience lower healthcare costs.