Jane Galt points out another of the many problems with employer-provided health insurance. I believe that this lies at the core of health insurance problems. Until people actually are motivated to shop for insurance themselves, and the insurance companies motivated to view the patient, rather than employers, as the customer, we will have no hope of fixing things.

It's the second biggest cause of healthcare/insurance problems, after the fact that Medicare exists and the government de facto controls how much gets paid for what and artificially changes - well, eliminates - the market.

Oh wait! The government ALSO caused employer provided health coverage to exist!

Ah, the great tag team of Roosevelt and Johnson; what would we do without them?

OK, then make it the biggest tractable problem. It might be politically possible to decouple health insurance from employment, but getting rid of Medicare is probably unthinkable (at least until the system collapses).

Bush tried to decouple, or at least to start to decouple, health insurance from employment.

Kling (linked to by Galt) points out that state-by-state regulation is another big cost-booster. It ought to be possible for an individual to opt out of state regulation and purchase health insurance on a national market.

Yep, you are absolutely right Rand. It's up there with getting everyone to allow social security to fade away rather than eventually collapsing.

One of the more insidious problems in health care today is the increasingly common conflation of the terms "health insurance" and "health care".

Can you get affordable Insurance that covers pre-existing conditions? I'm curious.

My work policy covers them, so I've not had to think about it. But I can see scenarios that USian friends are currently going through with their health insurance which would have me flying back to the UK.

Daveon: Well, it depends on the condition, the coverage, and your definition of "affordable".

The problem that zaps a lot of people is that they don't think about insurance until they're actually sick.

As for the article: Well, I dunno, I have employer-provided health insurance, but I have six different choices about which insurance company and plan type I take--and there's an entirely separate Health-care Spending Account system, which I can use in addition to the insurance. I can certainly shop...