Has there ever been an effort to ban employer sponsored health care? I bet it would be a much bigger issue for people if they were paying for it personally rather than having their employer shell out.
Some of the Republican proposals this year had provisions for matching the employer tax break on health insurance, but none of them got rid of it (a less drastic step than banning employer provided insurance would be to only give individuals tax deductions for insurance).
And there was a failed effort to repeal the ACA.
It drives me crazy. I can choose auto insurance, life insurance, home insurance, disability insurance all independently from other decisions, but health is this special category that is legally linked to my employer.
It's just that it wouldn't make sense to do that at an additional cost of thousands of dollars.
You could decline the benefits if you really wanted (e.g. if you were Christian Scientist), but you lose thousands of dollars of your compensation.
The ideal would be for your employer to deliver the same value in the form of salary, and then you have the choice free and clear.
[Edit] Corrected "new age" to "new religious movement".
New Age is a later 20th century thing that is not strongly tied to any historical religion.
1870s
> anti-science
Though popular medicine was only a little sciency when they were founded.
> quacky
They use to have lots of celebrity adherents: Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, George Hamilton. Kind of like Scientology nowadays.
Yes, there is, but from the other direction from the one you are interested in (universal single-payer).
There's also been efforts to eliminate tax and other incentives and mandates that make employer-sponsored care common, which is probably closer to what you are looking for, though the people backing that would generally be ideologically opposed to prohibiting employer-sponsored health care.
> I bet it would be a much bigger issue for people
The reason health care is a major political issue across the spectrum is that it's costs are already a giant issue for most people. There's disagreement on what to do about it, not on whether it's a big issue that people feel significant impact from. Your solving a non-problem by looking for ways to make it a big issue.