[lotsofpulp]

That was the goal (if a taxpayer funded healthcare model was not possible), but even just getting rid of employers and dumping everyone on healthcare.gov was not politically possible.

Big and well funded employers love the competitive advantage of having lower per employee administrative costs over smaller employers.

This was sort of fixed at the end of 2016 by allowing all employers to reimburse employees for employee purchased health insurance with pre tax income.

Employers also love obfuscating labor prices so it makes it more difficult for employees to compare wages from employer to employer (although paystubs and box 12 code dd of w-2 does show you the price of the health insurance you are getting, but you usually do not have access to this information when deciding on a job offer).