[derekjdanserl]

That’s right. But the employer-dependent health insurance arrangement in the U.S. was implemented as an alternative to the various political dynamics that regulate most countries’ healthcare systems and it has successfully done so.

The problem, in other words, is that a truly free-market healthcare system would be politically infeasible in a major first-world nation. So instead of a public healthcare system that would provide minimal healthcare services to all citizens, they tied it to employment, effectively moving it from the consumer market to the labor market. So this arrangement, like most neoliberal policies including Obamacare, has served merely to buy more time for the ruling class. And worst of all it has worked.