From Bloomberg this morning:
The law now is giving businesses cover to loosen the decades-old link between jobs and health insurance
The Bloomberg article treats this as a negative - and it may be bad news in the short term for those who lose company coverage and have to move to the exchanges.
I believe, however, that employment-based health insurance is one of the bigger problems in our insurance system and the reason so many are uninsured. We all know the effects of the recession on employment, full time employment and reduced participation rate in the workforce. With so many people not working and unable to work, it should be obvious that employment-based insurance will not cover everyone.
Finding our way to a new insurance paradigm should finally let everyone get good coverage. With any luck and justice, it will evolve to a public option and/or single payor type plan - not soon, but someday.
I wish we had some policies and safeguards that companies no longer providing health care have to put the money they save back into health care - taxes or stipends or raises or something. My cynical side says they will pocket most, if not all, of the "savings". That's the downside of the process we have to get through.