Maybe Socialism isn't all bad

[Rigby5]

Sure employer health care is socialism.
Do you pay for it?
No.
Who does?
The people who have to pay more in taxes because of your employer tax break for health insurance.
Which is the poor people who do not get employer health benefits.

My health insurance premiums are deducted from my pay check. My employer also makes a contribution. The only poor people that are not offered employer health plans are people who do not have an employer to offer them one. In other words, people without a job who do not pay taxes do not have employer health plans and instead get free health care from the government. Are you saying that employers only offer their health insurance plans to highly paid employees? What you are saying makes no sense.

Less than 20% of your employer provided health insurance is deducted from your paycheck.
The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.
About HALF the population is NOT offered employer based health benefits.
YES, what I am saying is that employers ONLY offer health benefits to their highly paid employees.
For example, at fast food restaurants ONLY the managers get employer health benefits.
NONE of the other employees get any benefits at all.
Why is it you seem to not know anything about low paying jobs?
Didn't you at least have to work these jobs to get through college?
And even after college, whenever I work on contract, I get no benefits at all.
That is not just no health insurance, but no sick days, overtime, paid holidays, etc.

The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.

Sounds interesting. How does my employer health insurance expenditure "come from other taxpayers"?
Be specific.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.
If the other tax payer who have to make up you lack of payment do not get health care benefits, then the poor and abused are essentially subsidizing the wealth and privileged. And the average is something like 40% of the population does not get health care benefits.

What is worst of all, is that those who do get health care benefits and do not care what actual health providers charge, then are guilty of letting the insurance companies and providers run a scam to inflate prices, thus making health care unaffordable to anyone who does not have insurance. It essentially is an extortion racket insurance companies run. And the victims are the poor.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

 

[RandomPoster]

I did have to work low paying jobs, starting at minimum wage, and always had health insurance offered if I was working full time. I have worked as a contractor with no health insurance, except that was a decision I made. Saying the deduction is tax exempt simply means it's not taxed. It doesn't mean the government is pitching more money on top of it.

I personally would be in favor of getting rid of employer health plans and privatizing the whole thing. I have actually made a post suggesting it on this forum.

Getting rid of the tax exemption would be acceptable to me because then it would go back to the way it was in the 1950s before the tax exemption, and almost no one would have health insurance. Instead people would finance health care costs after they were incurred, and that would give them control over cost and quality.

When you get tax exempt benefits, that does not mean the government is pitching in more money, but it does mean you are paying less tax than you should, and that means all other tax payers are pitching in more than they should to cover your unfair advantage.

And I have never heard of a minimum wage job coming with benefits like health care? Out of my realm of experience I suppose. But even high paying jobs did not used to come with health care necessarily.

I mean saying get rid of employer health plans and privatize it all.

Repealing the employer benefit tax exemption is how you do that.
The biggest advantage is that then you would not be afraid to quit due to concerns over losing your health care benefits.
But once the employer is not paying for your health insurance, likely health insurance will go away.
It is a total rip off and extortion.
The only reason it is accepted now is because you don't pay for it.
It you had to pay for it, you would pass.
For example, I have already calculated I paid more then half a million in health insurance, and not once gone above the annual deductible. So not a cent back.

Health insurance should not be tied to your employer. It is insurance. I do not get my car insurance through my employer. I provide my employer with a day's work and he provides me with a day's pay. Unionization and forcing your employer to provide health care is socialism.

Of course health care should not be tied to your employer.
But is also should not be tied to an insurance company that is skimming profit, manipulating costs, and making your health care much more expensive than it should be.
If you want to prepay, (and I think prepaying anything is a terrible idea), then you should join an HMO that is run by the health care providers, not an insurance company that adds nothing and just skims and extorts.

Risk pooling is EXACTLY what we create governments for. That is what we do when we create police, fire departments, dept of defense, etc. There is no reason to give anyone profits over our risk management.
For profit insurance is always a terrible thing, not only because it wastes money, but because insurance companies want high prices and don't care about quality. It turns what should be a 2 party transaction into a 3 party transaction that can't work.

But I agree the employer add another layer and makes it into a 4 party transaction, which is even worse.

However, it is wrong to blame unions for employer health care benefits. That was though up by the industries, and pushed through the IRS. The unions were only trying to adapt.

I believe the health insurance provider should make my risk assessment based on my risks and price my insurance based on that. I should not have to pay the same as some unhealthy person.

"For profit insurance is always a terrible thing, not only because it wastes money, but because insurance companies want high prices and don't care about quality."

Do you have car insurance, home owner's insurance, life insurance, or any other type of insurance? If you don't want medical insurance, don't buy it and pay out of pocket. That would actually be more viable if we hadn't driven medical costs so high by treating medical care as a human right, as opposed to the purchasable service it is.

Be very careful about what you want to put the government in charge of.

 

[RandomPoster]

My health insurance premiums are deducted from my pay check. My employer also makes a contribution. The only poor people that are not offered employer health plans are people who do not have an employer to offer them one. In other words, people without a job who do not pay taxes do not have employer health plans and instead get free health care from the government. Are you saying that employers only offer their health insurance plans to highly paid employees? What you are saying makes no sense.

Less than 20% of your employer provided health insurance is deducted from your paycheck.
The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.
About HALF the population is NOT offered employer based health benefits.
YES, what I am saying is that employers ONLY offer health benefits to their highly paid employees.
For example, at fast food restaurants ONLY the managers get employer health benefits.
NONE of the other employees get any benefits at all.
Why is it you seem to not know anything about low paying jobs?
Didn't you at least have to work these jobs to get through college?
And even after college, whenever I work on contract, I get no benefits at all.
That is not just no health insurance, but no sick days, overtime, paid holidays, etc.

The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.

Sounds interesting. How does my employer health insurance expenditure "come from other taxpayers"?
Be specific.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.
If the other tax payer who have to make up you lack of payment do not get health care benefits, then the poor and abused are essentially subsidizing the wealth and privileged. And the average is something like 40% of the population does not get health care benefits.

What is worst of all, is that those who do get health care benefits and do not care what actual health providers charge, then are guilty of letting the insurance companies and providers run a scam to inflate prices, thus making health care unaffordable to anyone who does not have insurance. It essentially is an extortion racket insurance companies run. And the victims are the poor.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

Privatizing health insurance would solve that problem.

 

[whitehall]

Wait a minute, if you live in a socialist country and you are starving you are a starving socialist.

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

Here's another way to look at it.

ya couldn't make it up if ya tried

Im hoping theyre dumb enough to release a list of what were allowed to eat since a nice porterhouse is verboten

That would be gold

 

[Rigby5]

Getting rid of the tax exemption would be acceptable to me because then it would go back to the way it was in the 1950s before the tax exemption, and almost no one would have health insurance. Instead people would finance health care costs after they were incurred, and that would give them control over cost and quality.

When you get tax exempt benefits, that does not mean the government is pitching in more money, but it does mean you are paying less tax than you should, and that means all other tax payers are pitching in more than they should to cover your unfair advantage.

And I have never heard of a minimum wage job coming with benefits like health care? Out of my realm of experience I suppose. But even high paying jobs did not used to come with health care necessarily.

I mean saying get rid of employer health plans and privatize it all.

Repealing the employer benefit tax exemption is how you do that.
The biggest advantage is that then you would not be afraid to quit due to concerns over losing your health care benefits.
But once the employer is not paying for your health insurance, likely health insurance will go away.
It is a total rip off and extortion.
The only reason it is accepted now is because you don't pay for it.
It you had to pay for it, you would pass.
For example, I have already calculated I paid more then half a million in health insurance, and not once gone above the annual deductible. So not a cent back.

Health insurance should not be tied to your employer. It is insurance. I do not get my car insurance through my employer. I provide my employer with a day's work and he provides me with a day's pay. Unionization and forcing your employer to provide health care is socialism.

Of course health care should not be tied to your employer.
But is also should not be tied to an insurance company that is skimming profit, manipulating costs, and making your health care much more expensive than it should be.
If you want to prepay, (and I think prepaying anything is a terrible idea), then you should join an HMO that is run by the health care providers, not an insurance company that adds nothing and just skims and extorts.

Risk pooling is EXACTLY what we create governments for. That is what we do when we create police, fire departments, dept of defense, etc. There is no reason to give anyone profits over our risk management.
For profit insurance is always a terrible thing, not only because it wastes money, but because insurance companies want high prices and don't care about quality. It turns what should be a 2 party transaction into a 3 party transaction that can't work.

But I agree the employer add another layer and makes it into a 4 party transaction, which is even worse.

However, it is wrong to blame unions for employer health care benefits. That was though up by the industries, and pushed through the IRS. The unions were only trying to adapt.

I believe the health insurance provider should make my risk assessment based on my risks and price my insurance based on that. I should not have to pay the same as some unhealthy person.

"For profit insurance is always a terrible thing, not only because it wastes money, but because insurance companies want high prices and don't care about quality."

Do you have car insurance, home owner's insurance, life insurance, or any other type of insurance? If you don't want medical insurance, don't buy it and pay out of pocket. That would actually be more viable if we hadn't driven medical costs so high by treating medical care as a human right, as opposed to the purchasable service it is.

Be very careful about what you want to put the government in charge of.

While it would seem true that your effort to be healthier than others should be rewarded, the reality is that most things, like broken bones, cancer, etc., are all just random chance.

I have never gone over the deductible, and the most was for stitches, but that is not relevant.

I have car insurance, home insurance, etc., ONLY because I am forced to.
I would never have any insurance voluntarily, and consider insurance companies to be fraud and extortion.

Medical costs are NOT high because of it being considered a right.
The exact opposite.
Medical costs are less than half in socialist countries, and it is private insurance companies that cause medical costs to be through the roof. There is no one trying to keep costs down because insurance companies are the ones who pay, and they want highers costs, so that people then are forced to buy insurance.

No matter who you put in charge, all systems that can become corrupt, will become corrupt.
So the question is how to fight corruption?
And that can either be by you refusing to buy, suing over billing and services, or being able to vote for or against the person responsible.
The fact you can't vote over your health care when it is all private, is a distinct disadvantage.
And you can't bargain when it is through your employer.
But even if you buy your own, you are too small individually.
We need collective bargaining at the very least.

 

[Rigby5]

Less than 20% of your employer provided health insurance is deducted from your paycheck.
The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.
About HALF the population is NOT offered employer based health benefits.
YES, what I am saying is that employers ONLY offer health benefits to their highly paid employees.
For example, at fast food restaurants ONLY the managers get employer health benefits.
NONE of the other employees get any benefits at all.
Why is it you seem to not know anything about low paying jobs?
Didn't you at least have to work these jobs to get through college?
And even after college, whenever I work on contract, I get no benefits at all.
That is not just no health insurance, but no sick days, overtime, paid holidays, etc.

The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.

Sounds interesting. How does my employer health insurance expenditure "come from other taxpayers"?
Be specific.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.
If the other tax payer who have to make up you lack of payment do not get health care benefits, then the poor and abused are essentially subsidizing the wealth and privileged. And the average is something like 40% of the population does not get health care benefits.

What is worst of all, is that those who do get health care benefits and do not care what actual health providers charge, then are guilty of letting the insurance companies and providers run a scam to inflate prices, thus making health care unaffordable to anyone who does not have insurance. It essentially is an extortion racket insurance companies run. And the victims are the poor.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

Privatizing health insurance would solve that problem.

I do not understand, because health insurance is totally private now and not very good.
And it used to be even worse before ACA.

 

[dblack]

However, it is wrong to blame unions for employer health care benefits. That was though up by the industries, and pushed through the IRS. The unions were only trying to adapt.

History disagrees with you. Unions weren't alone in the effort, but they were a key driver in the campaign to foster health care dependency.

 

[Rigby5]

Wait a minute, if you live in a socialist country and you are starving you are a starving socialist.

Never heard of anyone starving under socialism.
Russia was never socialist or communist, but was Stalinist, which is state capitalism.
You can tell because socialism requires collective ownership, which means democratic voting and representation.
Stalinism is more like feudalism, which a wealthy, elite, aristocracy.

 

[dblack]

The employer contributes the rest, but ALL of it is tax exempt, so about 25% of it is coming from other tax payers actually.

Sounds interesting. How does my employer health insurance expenditure "come from other taxpayers"?
Be specific.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.
If the other tax payer who have to make up you lack of payment do not get health care benefits, then the poor and abused are essentially subsidizing the wealth and privileged. And the average is something like 40% of the population does not get health care benefits.

What is worst of all, is that those who do get health care benefits and do not care what actual health providers charge, then are guilty of letting the insurance companies and providers run a scam to inflate prices, thus making health care unaffordable to anyone who does not have insurance. It essentially is an extortion racket insurance companies run. And the victims are the poor.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

Privatizing health insurance would solve that problem.

I do not understand, because health insurance is totally private now and not very good.
And it used to be even worse before ACA.

No, health insurance is heavily regulated, has been for decades.

 

[Rigby5]

However, it is wrong to blame unions for employer health care benefits. That was though up by the industries, and pushed through the IRS. The unions were only trying to adapt.

History disagrees with you. Unions weren't alone in the effort, but they were a key driver in the campaign to foster health care dependency.

Wrong.
It was NOT the unions who started the employer benefit tax exemptions.
It was started by companies who wanted more tax exemptions for their profits right after WWII.
There was no campaign to foster health care dependency originally.
But once employers started using this exemption, then insurance companies cranked up medical costs, and unions had to demand coverage for their members because it was then the only way to get medical access.
It was around 1958 or something, and unions were not at all powerful at that time.

 

[Rigby5]

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.
If the other tax payer who have to make up you lack of payment do not get health care benefits, then the poor and abused are essentially subsidizing the wealth and privileged. And the average is something like 40% of the population does not get health care benefits.

What is worst of all, is that those who do get health care benefits and do not care what actual health providers charge, then are guilty of letting the insurance companies and providers run a scam to inflate prices, thus making health care unaffordable to anyone who does not have insurance. It essentially is an extortion racket insurance companies run. And the victims are the poor.

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

Privatizing health insurance would solve that problem.

I do not understand, because health insurance is totally private now and not very good.
And it used to be even worse before ACA.

No, health insurance is heavily regulated, has been for decades.

Regulated is irrelevant.
Since insurance companies are large and wealthy enough, they control politicians, not the other way around.
Insurance companies like the regulations, because that keeps out competition and gives them more of a monopoly.

 

[dblack]

When one person gets tax exempt benefits, that is unfair, and then other tax payers have to pay more to make up for what you got as an undeserved exemption.

How much more did you pay because I have employer health insurance.
Be specific. Show your math.

It is a complex flow because it has many accumulative layers.
On the surface, it sounds like like employers providing health care benefits only hides about a third of your salary from taxes, and if you are in a 20% bracket, that would only then be a 15th of your total income that is taken out of the tax revenue.
But it actually is much worse than that, because by you not caring what your employer is paying for your pre-paid health care benefits, you have allowed health care costs to more than double for those who don't get employer benefits. And this huge health care benefit burden then also gets tacked onto manufacturing costs, making our products less globally marketable, and greatly harming the whole economy. The bottom line they estimate is that about a third of our whole economy is wasted on employer health care caused bloat. That is second only to the military industrial complex in being an anchor to drag down our economy.

Privatizing health insurance would solve that problem.

I do not understand, because health insurance is totally private now and not very good.
And it used to be even worse before ACA.

No, health insurance is heavily regulated, has been for decades.

Regulated is irrelevant.
Since insurance companies are large and wealthy enough, they control politicians, not the other way around.
Insurance companies like the regulations, because that keeps out competition and gives them more of a monopoly.

Yep. That's what I meant. But thanks for filling in the blanks

 

[Rigby5]

End the Exemption for Employer-Provided Health Care - NYTimes.com

{...
End the Exemption for Employer-Provided Health Care

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor scholar in health care and retirement policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

UPDATED DECEMBER 6, 2016, 11:29 AM

The largest tax break in the federal tax code is a stealth subsidy that is both unfair and inefficient. Premiums paid for employer-sponsored health insurance are excluded from taxable income, reducing the amount workers owe in income and payroll taxes by about $250 billion annually. In effect, the exclusion is the third largest health program after Medicare and Medicaid, yet it has been largely ignored as Congress has tried to rein in federal health spending.

That lost revenue is more than enough to cover the cost of providing health insurance to the 42 millionpeople who were uninsured in 2013. In addition, the exclusion has other pernicious effects.

The exclusion is regressive. According to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis for 2007, the average savings for tax filers with incomes less than $30,000 was about $1,650 compared to about $4,580 for those with incomes over $200,000.

It distorts how workers are paid. Many workers do not realize that their employer’s contribution to the health insurance premium comes at the cost of lower cash wages. This has contributed to a shift from (taxable) cash wages to (nontaxable) health benefits. Between 1999 and 2014, the average employer contribution for family coverage nearly tripled while wage rates increased by only about half.

The exclusion fuels the growing cost of health care. There is no upper limit on the amount that may be excluded from income. That encourages workers to buy generous insurance that offers lower cost-sharing but higher tax-free premiums. Such coverage makes consumers less price-sensitive and promotes the use of medical services that may provide little value. According to the Institutes of Medicine, 30 cents of every dollar spent on health care in this country is wasted, in part because of the financial incentives of the exclusion.

The “Cadillac tax” — a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost health insurance that exceeds limits set by the Affordable Care Act — is a poor way to correct those perverse incentives. It is a blunt tool that ultimately will hit even moderate-priced health insurance (because of indexing), and one that continues to foster misunderstanding about who is actually paying when the employer makes a contribution to the benefit. But the tax has triggered a shift toward leaner insurance plans, and more employers are considering moving to a defined contribution approach to health benefits that will focus worker attention on what they can do to cope with rising health costs.
...}

 

[dblack]

End the Exemption for Employer-Provided Health Care - NYTimes.com

{...
End the Exemption for Employer-Provided Health Care

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor scholar in health care and retirement policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

UPDATED DECEMBER 6, 2016, 11:29 AM

The largest tax break in the federal tax code is a stealth subsidy that is both unfair and inefficient. Premiums paid for employer-sponsored health insurance are excluded from taxable income, reducing the amount workers owe in income and payroll taxes by about $250 billion annually. In effect, the exclusion is the third largest health program after Medicare and Medicaid, yet it has been largely ignored as Congress has tried to rein in federal health spending.

That lost revenue is more than enough to cover the cost of providing health insurance to the 42 millionpeople who were uninsured in 2013. In addition, the exclusion has other pernicious effects.

The exclusion is regressive. According to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis for 2007, the average savings for tax filers with incomes less than $30,000 was about $1,650 compared to about $4,580 for those with incomes over $200,000.

It distorts how workers are paid. Many workers do not realize that their employer’s contribution to the health insurance premium comes at the cost of lower cash wages. This has contributed to a shift from (taxable) cash wages to (nontaxable) health benefits. Between 1999 and 2014, the average employer contribution for family coverage nearly tripled while wage rates increased by only about half.

The exclusion fuels the growing cost of health care. There is no upper limit on the amount that may be excluded from income. That encourages workers to buy generous insurance that offers lower cost-sharing but higher tax-free premiums. Such coverage makes consumers less price-sensitive and promotes the use of medical services that may provide little value. According to the Institutes of Medicine, 30 cents of every dollar spent on health care in this country is wasted, in part because of the financial incentives of the exclusion.

The “Cadillac tax” — a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost health insurance that exceeds limits set by the Affordable Care Act — is a poor way to correct those perverse incentives. It is a blunt tool that ultimately will hit even moderate-priced health insurance (because of indexing), and one that continues to foster misunderstanding about who is actually paying when the employer makes a contribution to the benefit. But the tax has triggered a shift toward leaner insurance plans, and more employers are considering moving to a defined contribution approach to health benefits that will focus worker attention on what they can do to cope with rising health costs.
...}

Indeed. If I were in charge of health care reform, repealing this subsidy is the first thing I'd do.