How Many Employers Will Stop Providing Health Insurance?
24th March 2010
Why provide something that your employees can get from the government at a subsidized price? How many Canadian employers provide health benefits? I doubt that any do.
If preliminary summaries of Obamacare are true, it looks like individual health insurance will soon be a better deal than employer-provided health insurance. In the individual market, you can now wait until you’re really sick to buy insurance: “Heads I win, tails I break even.” Firms won’t have that gimme – and it seems more valuable than premiums’ tax deductibility. Admittedly, Obamacare imposes a small penalty on individuals who don’t buy insurance, and a moderate penalty on firms that don’t provide it. But it still seems like it will be in the financial self-interest of many firms and their workers to get rid of insurance, and split the (cash savings minus penalties).