>Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official in the Reagan and Bush the Elder
>administrations, also cited the BLS number in a remarkable (for a
>conservative) article in Forbes last month defending higher taxation and
>government spending against the tea baggers to his right in the Republican
>party:
>
>http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett_print.html
>
>Among other things, Bartlett observed:
>
[...]
>"In 2008, employer-provided health insurance reduced the cash wages of
>American workers by 7.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If
>businesses didn't have to pay for health insurance, they could afford to pay
>their workers 7.9% more and be no worse off.
And if pigs had wings, they could fly.
Sure, if employers didn't have to pay health insurance, they *could* pass the savings on to their employees. But why *would* they? Why wouldn't they just keep it?
> If workers paid 7.9% more of
>their income in taxes to pay for national health insurance, they would also
>be no worse off.
Workers don't pay tax, employers do. But it makes no difference, except that the employer would be paying the cost of health care to the government as tax, rather than to the insurance mafia as premium/protection.
I imagine the practical fear of the employing class is that any form of universal health coverage would be seen as an automatic right of citizenship. Rather than a privilege conditional on obedience to one's employer. Not to mention that health care costs can be somewhat of an open-ended commitment, the costs can just keep going up and up. Once it is established that the cost should be borne by the employing class through tax, the cost increases might very well rise uncontrollably. (The employing class isn't taken in by the fairy tale that workers pay tax, they know that they are the ones who actually pay all the taxes that are nominally paid by their employers.)
In some jurisdictions with so-called universal health care, this is addressed by having a two tier health care system. A private system, with private hospitals and private health insurance, for those who can afford to pay and an inadequate public system for everyone else.
In Australia, as well as a public health care system, with a universal medicare levy, the private insurance system is actually massively subsidised (30% of premiums are paid by the federal government). Though that has to be understood to be a temporary arrangement, designed to undermine the public health system. It can't last, it is massively expensive and shamelessly rorted by the private health insurance funds.
It is a matter of judgement whether the enormous efficiency gains to be had from a publicly funded universal health care system outweigh the risks and the extra costs of actually providing health care to all. At present of course, a great many Americans simply can't access health care at all. That might be considered a compensatory cost saving. Not to mention that the threat of being left to die from treatable illness is a powerful tool to discipline your employees. Universal health care removes that Dickensian stick, in appearance if not in reality.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas