Ask HN: Why is health insurance bound to employers in the US?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19870905

by hguhghuff • 7 years ago

3 3 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It appears that health insurance in the US is tightly bound to the employer in some way.

Why is this? Doesn't seem to make sense at any level.

howard941• 7 years ago

The conventional explanation blames WW2 wage controls for creating the benefit as a differentiator.

The more cynical among us suffer it as cost of satisfying capital by way of employee job lock, particularly when coupled with the soon-to-return preexisting condition exclusions, and even though the locks disincentivize entrepreneurship and other sorts of beneficial risk tasking.

hguhghuff• 7 years ago

So actually it doesn't make sense but some company benefits so it's locked in forever that way?

sarcasmic• 7 years ago

See the history of the Stabilization Act of 1942 [1] and Executive Order 9250. Wages were frozen by law, but not benefits, so companies began offering benefits, including health insurance [2] The next year the IRS decided these were nontaxable, until it changed its mind in 1953, only to be overruled by Congress in 1954 [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_Act_of_1942 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th... [3] https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/the-question-o...

Ask HN: Why is health insurance bound to employers in the US?

Related Stories