Employer health plans are getting pricier and skimpier
Imagine if grocery stores forced us to choose one of a few dozen grocery &quot;insurance&quot; memberships to buy groceries, and negotiated directly with the insurers. No prices are labeled in store, they just detect whatever you take and send you a bill at the end of the month. (Differing brands of the same  food product are not available in store of course.) Individuals are charged 3-100x more per product than negotiated rates, but can&#x27;t find out until afterwards. Grocery &quot;insurance&quot; would then become a necessity. People would trade away disproportionate amounts of their salary to get good grocery benefits from their employers, i.e. to not get price-gouged by virtue of being an individual on the market. Stores would run discount programs for the very poor, which they could point to when people get outraged (as drug companies do now.) When politicians would threaten the system, grocery stores would fund ads about the &quot;long lines&quot; and limited food availability that would occur. Instead laws  would get passed reinforcing the system by making sure everyone gets grocery insurance, as its a necessity (and it would _be_ a necessity).<p>I&#x27;m not saying that health care _could_ be exactly like grocery stores, with many alternatives, transparent pricing, and customers making the final decisions, but that it would have to be much _more_ like grocery stores to call it a free market. What we are working with now is just a system of pricing cartels supported by fear and lobbying. It needs to go.