Why does that have to be the case? If a company with 10,000 workers stopped covering their workers, and their workers all went to sign up directly with the insurance company, why would the economics of the deal change for either of them?
Walmart seems to offer low prices on goods, even though it's customers haven't joined together in a large purchasing block and negotiated low prices.
My car insurance seems to be reasonable even though my employer didn't get us all together and negotiate for a company-wide car insurance plan.
What makes health insurance the ONE thing that we think is better purchased by a 3rd party who limits our choice in exchange for delivering a large group of captive purchasers?
Our neighborhood HOA explored saving money for the members, and cutting down on trucks, by getting a single trash collector for the entire neighborhood.
In the end they found out that NO trash collecter was going to be cheaper for the entire neighborhood than what they could already get individually. And we found that neighborhoods who had done this in the past were now, often without knowing it, paying more per person from the company than the CHEAPEST rate that company offered in other neighborhoods where they had to compete for the business.
If 200 million people suddenly had to all make their OWN decisions on which health insurance to buy, my assertion is that there would be a HUNDRED new plans to choose from, offering a WIDE RANGE of different options for different consumers, and that those plans would be competing by slashing prices.
You don't see it much now because the few major companies have their captive audience to use as economic leverage to drive out competition. That, and they have stupid state legislatures who dictate minimum coverage requirements that limit competition.
One of the main differences would be the individuals would now be rated based on the risk they represent. An employer provided plan costs the same premium for everyone whether you are a 50 year old obese chain smoker or a 25 year old triathalon winner.
Once those two individuals hit the private market, the cost will go down for one and up for the other.
A big factor for most families is the lack of maternity coverage on most private pay insurance policies. Outside of employer provided coverage, it is nearly impossible to find maternity coverage. So the family is looking at a minimum $8-10k for a pregancy.
I’m very much in favor of the individual/family seeking insurance independent of their employer. I also agree with your points regarding the competitive advantage to the consumer when the products are in effect decentralized.
Listen for the big corps that are expressing interest in the proposed socialized health care and the perceived benefit of offloading the cost to the gov’t (which would be you, me, and the other guy/gal). In this case, the tax payer ends up subsidizing Big-Health-Care-Cost-Evader and the investors, domestic and foreign, reap the windfall at our expense. If corps don’t want to offer health care, that’s ok. But, there will inevitably be a higher salary expense on the balance sheet since the cost of health care will still need to be covered.