Did you know insurance works by pooling and sharing the risk amongst a group?

The larger the group to share the risk and cost, the more efficient it becomes.

If you try to buy health insurance for all your employees as a tiny employer, costs are higher than if some employer with hundreds of thousands of employees seeks to buy the same insurance.

Because that huge employer is sharing the risk of some employee having to get very expensive treatment across all those employees.

You know what is the largest group available? All the citicens of the country in a single insurance plan. That is the point of maximum efficiency (least cost). As a bonus, you can remove all the middlemen of insurance companies, further increasing efficiency.

So why is someone who is not an employer, subsiding other employers in their purchase of employee insurance?

Did you know that you could charge people different rates for insurance based on risk profiles or deny them outright? You used to be able to anyway.

I’m fine subsidizing people of a similar risk profile that have a hit by a bus moment. I’m not fine subsidizing the obese and chronically ill.