DY – When people are covered through their employers they aren’t buying insurance on the open market. For example, my company offers a couple of different plans through one insurance company. These may or may not be the plans or company I would choose if everything else was equal, but the fact that my employer subsidizes these plans is a big incentive for me to choose one of them over paying full price on the open market.
If instead of paying me with insurance my compensation included “health care money” that I could use to buy insurance of my choosing or put into an HSA (health savings account), I would be shopping on the open market. This would put more people into the general pool because people who are currently covered through their employers would (a) be in the pool (b) with money to pay for insurance.
Obviously there are A LOT of details that need to be addressed and this isn’t the place for a full policy paper, but at a high level, I believe getting people out of employer plans and into the general market is the key to making health insurance work for all Americans.