It goes without saying that severing the employer insurance relationship should come with premiums being pushed back into salaries. What exactly that should look like is a pretty open-ended question, though.

Correct. You'll have a employer and employee deduction per period to Blue Cross or your insurer of choice. Same for dental, workers comp, etc.

OP has an interesting point, but at the societal level it's not fair to do comparisons with an unpriced externality in one of the alternatives.

More and more companies are direct insurance, meaning even if they use an "insurance company" to manage the group, that is just for the administration of the group. The companies are paying the medical costs of the employee directly.

Or why not tackle the bigger problem at the same time and move towards a more nationalized system.

Fully nationalized systems (e.g. UK) experience significant political exposure which is mostly avoided in subsidized markets (e.g. Japan). This can lead to occasional shortages, and it makes life a lot worse if you work in healthcare.

The solution to that is to ensure that there are no private options, forcing those in power into the same system as everyone else.

Are there government run medical systems today that have no supplemental policies available?

Anecdotally, I was required to use the VA and only the VA for a period of time. Private healthcare options drastically improved my quality of life during this time.

What is it with Americans and extremism? We're moving (slowly) out of the situation where we had the most unequal healthcare system in the developed world, now we have calls (echoed by actual Presidential candidates) to create what would be the most restricted healthcare system in the developed world.

Can't we just be normal for a few years and see how that goes?

You’d have to outlaw going to another country to get healthcare

Because not everyone agree's that a nationalized system is the best solution to the bigger problem, hell we probably do not even agree what the bigger problem is

i.e I am sure you believe the market is the problem, where I believe government is the problem, so since I believe government is the problem i certainly do not believe giving more control to the same government that created the problem is the solution to the problem

A role of a politician is not to ensure there is a complete public consensus before enacting a policy. It is to gather what makes a policy good, persuade the public that it is indeed a good policy, and then finally push through the legislative assembly with a general support from the public.

A politician that never acts unless there is a complete consensus is a pretty lousy politician and should probably be voted out of office.

Pretty sure none of that is relevant to my comment, Politicians have been trying to persuade the public to allow the government to take over health care since the 1990's, and have enacted a number of policies to worsen the health market making it harder and harder to operate, to extort the public in to accepting the government as the solution to the problem they have been slowly creating for the last 40+ years. (or really since WWII if you want to count creating the link between employment and insurance by enacting wage controls during the war)

So, the solution is to live with employer-controlled and -connected healthcare and watch them as they cut the coverage and hike the costs year after year. This might be fine when your a SWE in your 20's and not on any meds but for those on BP or diabetic medications, this isn't much of a solution.

Government didn't create this problem because it didn't mandate that employee healthcare be a benefit from employers. That was simply "laissez-faire capitalism", i.e., the belief that the market is all-knowing and will eventually guide us to an efficient and effective equilibrium. Except that really only happens in perfect markets and they don't exist outside of textbooks.

>Government didn't create this problem because it didn't mandate that employee healthcare be a benefit from employers. That was simply "laissez-faire capitalism",

No it absolutely was not. Employer provided benefits like health care became a part of the compensation package as a direct result of Government imposed Wage Controls during WWII, companies then had to get creative to attract talent because they could not simply offer more income like laissez-faire capitalism would have normally resulted.

It is increasingly frustrating that people do not understand American history enough to see all the time the government has causes a problem, then rides in with a novel solution to the problem they caused. Employers have zero desire to linked to health insurance, and laissez-faire capitalism most certainly did not create this link.

>the belief that the market is all-knowing and will eventually guide us to an efficient and effective equilibrium.

Almost no one that supports free markets believe this, it is a trope used by people to straw-man. free markets are not perfect, not by a long shot, they are however infinitely preferable to government, why? Market for the most part give you choice, when choice is taken out of the market one can often find government regulation behind that removal. Government is the removal individual choice, I like choice, I like freedom, I have no desire to have my healthcare controlled by the 535 morons in the US Congress, I know that makes me "crazy"

And funnelled back into taxes which would pay for that $600 cost directly.

There is no reason your employer can't offer you the insurance, or put the same amount of money in a tax excempt account for your to purchase your own insurance from. The only reason why is employers love you to be 'tied' to them for the benefits.

Outstanding.

Now, given the way the world is, at this second, how do you see this evolution actually going?

Same here. The insurance through my Fortune 500 company is incredibly good and cheap. It would be so expensive if I tried to buy a similar level of insurance at market rates.

The insurance from my Fortune 500 company is very cheap, and if you like the insurance options they have then it is very good. But if you'd prefer something else, there is no option at all.

I would like to be able to keep my preferred doctor when I switch jobs.

Don't companies get to deduct their contributions to health care plans from their payroll taxes, which means the government is effectively subsidizing employer coverage (as opposed to individual coverage)?

Right, so legislate that companies with health insurance plans release the amount of money per employee they're paying to subsidize the plan, and force them to increase wages by no less than that amount.