[bryanlarsen]

With a small tweak it would have the opposite effect. Just mandate that employers must add what they previously paid in health insurance to people's salary. So it would look like significant pay raises to a substantial portion of the populace. I bet that would be popular.

[pitaj]

I don't know if you would even need to mandate it. Stop mandating it, and start taxing all benefits as income, and you remove the biggest incentive for employers for pay for them.

[bryanlarsen]

That would suck for employees. They just effectively got an effective decrease in pay.

A switch from employer-pay to government-pay should be a no-op for employees with employer health insurance. But in a naive scheme, it isn't. The burden for paying for health insurance moves from the employer to the employee (through increased taxes). The employer benefits because they stop paying for health insurance, the employee pays the costs.

Voters, who are mostly employees, would hate it.

OTOH, an on-paper pay raise for employees that doesn't cost the employer anything? That'll be much more politically palatable. "Both your taxes and your salary go up 10%" is a lot more palatable than "Your taxes go up 10%".

[BobaFloutist]

Health insurance contributions are pre-tax. Take home pay is post-tax.