hobby lobby, wins.
i cant wait until a corporation refuses to give insurance to a gay person, or a jewish person, or a muslim . . . due to religious beliefs. that, should be, amusing.
The whole problem is that business are forced to provide insurance in the first place. There is absolute no logical reason that an employer should be your point of purchase for insurance. This causes WAY more problems that it solves. The far better solution is to have employers include funding for employees to buy insurance where they want. You eliminate massive amounts of overhead cost by doing this as well as get rid of the entire concept of portability and (what is commonly mislabeled as) pre-existing conditions.
does this idea have traction anywhere, or is this just what you think the system should be?
I have no idea who (if anyone) subscribes to this theory other than me. However it really has a basis in logic and reason. The whole concept of having employers as the point of purchase of your health insurance is absurd on its face. Forcing employers to provide insurance is the worst thing that ever happened to the health care system. Taking steps to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have healthcare is great, but the way it is one now is down right stupid. It causes many problems and much higher costs. If we instead made it illegal for employers to actually provide the insurance and rather allowed them to provide funding for employees to go out and buy exactly what they want, the system would be much better. Make it so that part of the compensation package would be up to $X for purchasing insurance. Employees could then go get what they want knowing how much would be funded for them. We should allow BC/BS to go back to what they were initially supposed to be, that being (for lack of better term) insurance brokers who sell all plans from all companies. The saving would be HUGE...
Employers save:
They would not have to have staff who maintain all of the insurance records.
They would not have to negotiate every year over insurance plans with insurance companies.
They would not have to do the tons of paper work involved every year.
Insurance companies cave:
They would not have to negotiate every year over insurance plans with each employer.
Consumers save:
They will no longer be forced to buy only what their employer offers.
They can be part of whatever plan and group they want to buy into. These groups are not limited to just the employees of one business. They can be huge and with the risk being spread larger prices come down. This is one of the base principles of insurance and risk.
They no longer have to worry about portability since your insurance is YOURS not your employers.
Lastly, we need to treat health care like what it is. It is NOT a market commodity. Health care should not be a for profit enterprise (assuming we all know the difference between non-profit and not for profit). We need to eliminate these HMOs and such that are publicly traded ventures. Basically, unless you are an employee of the health care system, you ought not make money off of other people being sick. (That is way over simplified, but I am thinking you see the point I am making.)