I am not a business owner. Full disclosure. I AM a supporter of a single payer, government run, health insurance system. What I do not understand is why large and small business owners are not 100% in support of such a system? Why in the world would a business owner want to assume the responsibility of negotiating and maintaining an employee’s health insurance policy? This seems like a heavy burden on the business owners of the United States. How and why health insurance became entwined with employment is a complex matter, but it seems like something business owners would be fighting to end.
It seems to me that employers could pay their employees more since they would no longer be paying for a large percentage of their employees coverage. In turn, each citizen of the United States would be covered and would contribute to the payer pool via a tax which would be distributed over the entire populous. Isn’t the point of keeping insurance rates low to have the most people in the pool? Isn’t that how risk is most effectively moderated?
Take home pay would increase. Yes, the amount of taxes paid to support such a system would go up, but would that increase be more than the increase an employee would see on their paycheck without having insurance deducted? I do not believe it would. In effect, the average person would pay less for insurance.
The thing that bothers me the most about this conversation is when it is described as “Government run health care”. It is not. The proposal is “Government run health INSURANCE”. Insurance is about mitigating risk based on distribution of that risk across the widest spectrum. It is sensible, it is proven to work all around the world and it would reduce the burden of business all across the country.
My question is why business’s are not more vocal in their support? What am I missing?