Why I'm not hiring
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Most business people use the term "ObamaCare"; that has no bearing on the rise in medical insurance this year. I've seen the same rise.
Further, the health insurance reform legislation included a lot of necessary changes to make it viable to sever the employer/health insurance connection. I have a hard time reconciling his clear dislike of the changes with his claimed desire to reduce his own overhead.
We spend 22% of the GDP at the state and local level, 25% at the federal level and transfer 3.5% of the GDP though taxes and have a ridicules debt. To meet those obligations the government needs to take a little over half of everyone’s paycheck. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=19...
At the same time we have a horribly broken healthcare and education systems, aging infrastructure and little will to build for the future AND an ever growing debt. The problem is many people receive huge subsidies from the current system and nobody wants to give up their slice of the pie.
Now, if WE have something constructive to add feel which may be implemented in the real world free to post, until then let’s try and keep politics off of HN.
Edit: Not to single your post out, but I agreed with everything you said, and yet I still felt like I was wasting time by reading it. I guess I need to simply avoid clicking on link bait.
Sometimes I think that we should switch civil servants and politicians around between countries from time to time. That would be a good learning exercise--for good and bad examples.
E.g. Britain has a socialized health-care system in a broadly capitalist society. It's interesting to see what does and what does not work, instead of spreading all the FUD.
Another, much less charged example are the laws about shop closing times in Germany. Until a few years ago shops were only allowed to open until 18.00 on most day. Looking at other countries, it was obvious that relaxing those rules would not make the sky come down.
On the other hand, you can also look for other countries to spot bad ideas before you have to try them yourself.
His exposition contains a lot of interesting facts and numbers. Just because he is not in the same political camp as you doesn't make his point any less valid.
Everyone stop and think for a second - do you hold yourself to the same standard of debate as you hold the other side to? Would you, jsz0, call out a user of the word "teabagger" as coming from someone with an agenda? It's the same level of discourse.
A lot of people get upset when their ideal gets hit with a tacky dismissive label while simultaneously trying to slap one on the other side.
We got a big increase last time, too, though I can't remember what it was. I think it was near 20%, but just under. We have an aging employee base, and if the author of the WSJ does, too, that might explain the difference.
Actually, in the saner world, companies don't have to worry about health insurance because it's provided by the government.
You can't dissociate any player from the others.
It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall.
Exactly. Companies will still have to worry about it, whether they pay for insurance directly or indirectly.
"It should boil down to the question of finding the most efficient way for society overall."
To what end? And as judged by whom? The majority?
This is one reason I'm in favor of government health care: The profit motives of private health care favor denying care, since not paying out money is a good way to make money. So you have case where nobody will cover you for arbitrary reasons, or deny you payment due to a "pre-existing condition" or some other nonsense.
Would you favor the nationalization of all types of insurance or just medical? Doesn't auto-insurnace have the same evil profit motive?
This is an argument against all private insurance (home, auto, etc).
As for power lines.. well, there haven't really been any conclusive studies in this area. But you get the point.
Same-environment shouldn't be a factor, as long as the reasons the environment might impact health are/can be known.
I'd argue that nobody should be living somewhere that might have health risks involved (e.g., underground oil spills, toxic ash, a radioactive waste storage facility a block away from the elementary school .... in other words, williamsburg/greenpoint brooklyn).
What stops a business from giving her 75% of the $12,000 they currently spend on her benefits, pocketing the difference as increased profit, and leaving Sally to make up the difference with her dwindling discretionary income (despite a pay raise). I'm not sure how this help Sally.
I.e., Sally will go work somewhere else, or will unionize and kick their ass (ideally only in the figurative sense).
There's a lot of assumptions built into that outcome, but I take it that's the idea, if the numbers work out.
Should the government also be providing even more necessary items like food, housing, and transportation?
But yeah, it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either as it does in Britain and I am sure there too to some extent?
Agreed. That's very different from paying the large majority of everyone's food and housing costs, which is what the left wants to do with health care.
So food is not a problem. Nor is housing or transport. The latter are very different from health. You can afford very much not to travel. Walk instead. So too you can afford to not have your own house for a month but live at a friends house. Besides, the vast majority would not want to be provided a free house if they can afford it finely.
But with health there is a matter of principle also. The same principle that each life is precious applies to it. A person should not be free to die because of money in such a rich and prosperous country. Also, there should not be a two tire system whereby the rich can afford first class health care and the poor just enough to get on with plenty of annoyances or worse die.
No matter how many times you yell "socialism", that will still be true. The only question is how much money we waste before we finally switch over.
I guess you've never heard of farm subsidies. Our food prices are almost completely controlled by the government, which is precisely why it is so cheap. No one goes hungry in America, because famine costs about 2 dollars a person at the corner store or McDonald's to completely eliminate. And, for those that can't afford that, we have WIC and food banks/pantries or church-run soup kitchens (also indirectly subsidized due to non-profit or church tax status).
You'd basically have to try really hard to starve in this country.
I have, and we should get rid of them. But they're not actually that large in relative terms: $20 billion/year per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_Sta...). That comes out to around $60/year per American, and even if it goes entirely to lowered food prices (no), that's a small fraction of what we spend.
Furthermore, even if you were right and there was massive subsidization of food prices by the government, how much you pay is still directly proportional to how much you consume, so there's still some pricing signals in the market. Those signals are almost entirely absent in our "free market" (not) health care system: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/doctors-are-governm...
And, for those that can't afford that, we have WIC and food banks/pantries or church-run soup kitchens (also indirectly subsidized due to non-profit or church tax status).
Sure, and welfare for those who need it is a good thing.
Dole money, food vouchers, council houses, roads and subsidized public transport. They pretty much already do and I have no problem with my taxes paying for that.
Think of it from an entrepreneur's perspective. The bigger the safety net the higher you can jump.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_Joanne...
And yet, the UK is hardly known as a startup greenhouse. In fact quite the opposite. Now why do you think that is?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4
Whilst the idea of the government paying for healthcare may seem ridiculous to you it seems just as ridiculous to us that you might be ill and not be able to afford treatment.
CA and many other states are now going after companies that hire contractors to do the work that is usually done by employees (and they use their own definition of "employee", too). They will hit you with fines and back employment taxes should you be audited. How would you be audited? A contractor files for unemployment, to which they are not entitled (because unemployment taxes are not paid for them). It happens all the time.
Taxes take money out of the private sector and thus reduce the pool of capital for private sector job creation. Our taxes go to fund bankers and wars. That's why we're in such bad shape. If they went to build roads and bridges no one would care so much.
You could argue that you don't get much for them, but that wouldn't be true either. Most government programs are very popular, but it is strangely still popular to hate the government. The logical disconnect there should be obvious.
Most people will enthusiastically support programs that take $2 from other people and give $1 to them. If you have lots of programs like that they're clearly wasteful in aggregate, but each individual one will have vocal supporters.
He's paying almost as much for his end of the health insurance as the total tax take. What's he whine about? Taxes. Who's providing more bang for the buck, the health insurance company or the relevant federal, state and local governments? Does he have kids in school?
Does this guy even look at his own numbers?
This is a nice bit of sleight of hand but in reality our taxes that go to the gov't go back into the private sector, and according to our national debt do so at a greater rate then we take it in. Bankers and the Defense industry are in the private sector. Tax money doesn't just disappear from our economy. Heck even Mr. Bogen probably doesn't complain when he gets a contract for providing A/V systems for schools.
Besides, whether it is the private or public sector wasting money on wars it hardly makes a difference. It's the people's money and the people would rather keep it or see it used for more productive ends to benefit all and not some elite.
This is the sort of comment that drags down discussions about politics. No one is advocating that sort of thing here.
In fairness, the comment changhiskhan is replying to, that US is "arguably less civilized" is quite a mouthful as well, and is the sort of thing that sets of long, fruitless flame wars that lead nowhere.
Not sure I agree that it was all that inflammatory. It mas a bit tongue in cheek, but actually has a little bit truth to it. Anyway. You can take the boy out of Reddit, but not ...
Would you really want to waste any of your time with someone who believed in either 0 or 100? They're some sort of True Believers and nothing you can say - neither facts nor logic - will dissuade them from their view. Luckily though, this community is mostly composed of cleverer folk than that, something that ought to be pretty obvious.
Actually, it doesn't. US tax revenue per-person is pretty much in the middle of western Europe.
Things look different because US GDP/person is higher and poor workers only pay for their retirement. (SS payouts are fairly progressive, so it's a good deal for the poor and sucks for those near the cap. The cap exists because we don't want rich people to care about SS and we don't want to pay $400k/year to Ross Perot. If you want to remove the cap, please tell us how you're going to deal with rich people caring about SS, which they will if benefits are capped, or if you're going to uncap the benefits as well.)
Not really. The OECD average is 36%, Americans pay 28% and no western European states pay less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... In nominal terms the US may be higher, but I don't really see that that proves anything. The main problem is of course that so much has to be paid for by the individual in the US that is efficiently taken care of by the state in Europe, so comparing tax rates misses a big part of the issue.
> Not really. The OECD average is 36%, Americans pay 28% and no western European states pay less.
Yes really. American's pay 28% on a larger number, so the amount of money per person is basically the same.
BTW - you're ignoring corporate taxes, which are a significant fraction of revenues. They don't actually change the equivalence but they do increase the "revenues per person-year" number.
> nominal terms the US may be higher, but I don't really see that that proves anything.
Actually, it does.
> The main problem is of course that so much has to be paid for by the individual in the US that is efficiently taken care of by the state in Europe, so comparing tax rates misses a big part of the issue.
I'm not comparing tax rates. I'm comparing tax revenues per person.
You're pointing out that western Europeans get more for the same amount of money.
Combining those two facts tells us that a tax dollar goes further in western Europe than it does in the US.
If the US govt wants to provide the same benefits, it either needs more money per person than European govts or it needs to take the relevant amount of money from its other expenditures.
Don't you mean `regressive' then?
Not at all. A "progressive" tax system defined as one where those with more money pay a (progressively) larger fraction of said money. Since SS also has direct benefits, you look at the sum.
Unlike many in the political class, this man actually PAYS his taxes and the payroll taxes of his 80+ employees in pursuit of private enterprise.
Considering he has risked his own private capital to create jobs, he has earned some right to "whine" about the current trend of taxation.
I own my own LLC, and lose 45% of my "salary" to taxes (in large part because I pay both 7.5% "halves" of my Medicare tax). Is that far less than it would be in most other Western countries?
The real problem is that for roughly the same tax burden, you don't get a fraction of what Western European or Canadian counterparts get. No socialised healthcare, no government-subsidised education, a pitiful two weeks of paid vacation at best, joke unemployment benefits, etc.
I'm not necessarily arguing that any of that should be the government's job or that all aspects of it are fundamentally fiscally sustainable. I'm just pointing out that you get quite a bit less for your money; an alarming preponderance of your income tax goes to prosecuting pointless wars, Wall Street bailouts, and other suitably kleptocratic endeavours. Local and state government operations are substantially funded by sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes not even accounted for by your 45% figure; the income taxes do not yield many practical, down-on-the-ground results apart from the relatively small portion of the federal budget that goes to state-bound block grants.
This guy probably spent 8 years defending the Bush deficits and discovered he was a fiscal hawk on January 29, 2009. Until 2016, that is, or earlier if he's lucky.
And just for the record, I've been a registered Republican since I turned 18, and I've also noticed this sudden surge of fiscal hawkishness in the party. This isn't liberal bas talking.
This also isn't to say the guy is necessarily being disingenuous. Just that somebody in his chain of trust is playing politics and that's causing him to form opinions that aren't entirely rational.
patio11 has said in the past that he's a Republican. And even though I think I'd disagree with him about various topics in politics and economics, I think he's got a pretty good mind.
And I would vastly prefer a site where I can talk with people like him about tech and startups, rather than the Nth echo chamber site about politics where you get a self-reinforcing feedback loop that tends to marginalize those who disagree with the majority opinion.
patio11 and/or any other republican on the internet can speak for himself.
If I raise prices, my competitors don't, and costs don't go up, I lose customers.
If I raise prices, my competitors don't, and costs go up, I lose competitors.
Insurance companies all seem to be placing their bets on the latter case. If you feel they are wrong, feel free to bet against them.
It is not hard in an oligarchy to act like a monopoly.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/pdf/health_co...
Oligopolies do tend to be correlated with monopolistic pricing, but I'm not sure they allow it in an otherwise competitive market. Most oligopolies which successfully raise prices tend to be in uncompetitive markets, e.g. cell or cable service, and the price increases may be caused by the hindered competition rather than the oligopoly itself.
Consider the case of an oligopoly in the DRAM market: when they tried to raise the price of DRAM (2001-2002), they succeeded for a short time. They also collectively lost 3.3% of market share over those 2 years and members of the oligopoly (Hynix was the first, I think) quickly broke ranks in pursuit of increased profits.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Dec_17/a...
The combined market share of the largest and second largest insurer provider goes below 50% only in four states. It goes below 60% in only 5 states. That makes a combined 9 states out of 52 or so where there might not be an oligopoly. There are 19 states where their combined share is above 70% and I have used that cut off line strictly, not counting for example 69%.
So yeah, it might be very competitive in 4 states, ok maybe in 9 states. These states seem to be the one I recognise such as California where the combined share is the lowest at 44%, but it seems that for the vast majority of people the market is hardly "very competitive" or competitive at all.
Also, a market can be highly competitive even if it supports an oligopoly. It may simply be the case that the oligopoly is outcompeting smaller players. See, for example, DRAM, PC's, cars (ignoring their recent bailout), big box retail stores.
I am not saying that the market is or is not highly competitive. Personally with seeing such share markets of 80% and 90% and one even 98% I think they hardly differ much from monopolies especially since unlike internet businesses there is I would think a high barrier to entry and unlike PCs it is not a new market.
As for retail stores, at least in the UK, they hardly are competitive. We hear of price fixing all the time. They just engage in some game where they lower the prices by a penny and put them up by ten pence etc.
But in any event my point was not to conclude whether the market is or not competitive, but only to provide and alternative.
Incidentally, counting states is a bad approach. 1.1% of the US population lives in states where the top 2 insurers have at least 90% market share. The 4 states you described as being competitive (CA, NY, FL, Oregon) account for 25% of the population of the US.
In retrospect, this is roughly what you'd expect. You can't sell health insurance across state lines. Small states can only support one insurance company (due to the fixed costs of hiring actuaries), while big states can support many. So after some thought, I suppose you are right, and the oligopoly model probably does apply to insurers in small states.
During the Bush recovery there was much complaining about how salaries didn't go up. Well it turns out that the amount spent by employers on employees did go up at normal rates for a recovery. However increasing health care costs absorbed that surplus, and employees did not directly see more. In fact employees got moved to crappier plans and so saw less income.
It is too early to tell whether Obama's plan is going to cost us all more or less than the distorted market has been costing. But it is certain that the USA cannot long afford to let current cost trends continue unchecked.
Employees get to keep more the 75% of what the company spends for them? (56k / 74k) Employees in Italy and Scandinavia countries barely get 50% of what companies pays them...
Not to turn this into an argument about what government should be doing; don't care, irrelevant. The point is simply that you do get a lot for giving up ~50%+ of your paycheck in those countries. Here, you just give up whatever you give up (your figure doesn't take into account sales taxes, excise taxes, use taxes, property taxes, etc.)
Here is a huge opinion that could be incorrect. Most people work for what they need to live. If it becomes more expensive to live, Sally will want a raise. If it's cheaper to live, she won't be so pissed when she doesn't get a raise. The bottom line is all that matters to most people. Therefore, no matter what taxes are created, purported to be income tax and what not, are paid by businesses.
What does this mean in practice? It means that by having incoming taxes at all, we are encouraging business to hire people outside of the US. The only way to level the playing fields, as far as I can see, would be to shift the taxes from income to sales. I don't know if that is plausible or not, but it's the only way I can see the US government really encouraging job growth here in the US. It would mean that no matter where your company does it's business, if it uses the US market, it has to pay the piper, and would give a real shot to US workers at competing with other world-wide workers.
An alternative solution is to tax the unused value of illiquid capital like land. Unlike income and sales taxes, which act as disincentives on economic exchange, this kind of tax acts as an incentive for exchange, production, and employment: if you own capital which is not being put to use, this tax is either an incentive to put it to use or to sell it to someone who will.
This isn't a new idea. It was put forward by Henry George in Progress and Poverty in 1879: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty (Disclaimer: I haven't read the book, but I did buy it recently and it's on my to-read list.)
Consider property taxes: if your ranch makes 100k / year many people will haply keep doing that for sentimental reasons, if however the land is worth 50 million and you need to pay 100k in taxes each year you will sell it to someone who will use the resource more productively.
It also eats away at debt. So if say the housing market is under water inflation is going to help people get out from their debt load.
PS: Or consider what happens with 20% deflation, what would you invest in?
Perhaps I'm being thick, but I'm still unsure: when you say, "Actually, this is the argument for low inflation," do you mean that we should focus on maintaining a low level of inflation instead of taxing underutilized capital? or in addition to it? or that, in policy terms, they're two sides of the same coin?
Please be careful to talk make clear whether you are talking about nominal ROI or inflation-adjusted (i.e. real) ROI.
If you have a tame investement with x% real ROI, you will get approximately x%+inflation nominal ROI.
So your argument needs patching up.
It is true, that inflation deters one from just holding onto cash.
Also, is there data to back up sales taxes in relation to dampening demand? It's the same tax, just taken from a different place. I find it hard to believe that the common consumer would hold on to money. They just don't do that.
> If she rents, her rent is certainly higher because of the landlords property taxes.
But here I disagree, at least somewhat. Property prices and rents are---to some degree---determined by how much people bid them up. Taxes on real estate influence how much of the rent goes to the owner and how much to the state. But the absolute level of rent won't be affected much.
(This is more the the more fixed the supply of real estate happens to be.)
Correction: (The more fixed the supply of real estate happens to be, the more pronounced this effect will be.)
Are you planning to uncap benefits? If you do, Ross Perot gets $400k/year. If you don't, rich people start caring about SS. Those are the reasons why Social Security advocates used to like the cap. Were they wrong?
FWIW, SS payouts are very progressive. Folks on the low end get a reasonable return on their contributions. Folks near/at the cap get a crappy deal. The rich ones don't care because of the cap.
Edit: This would also really help out aging athletes / rock stars / actors who make a lot of money when they are young and then run out.
Crappy payout was assumed in the "Ross Perot gets $400k/year".
It has two huge political problems - folks will scream about large payouts to rich folk and rich folk will fight the crappy ROI.
He's a neo-con of the highest order, so take his "Joe Biz" spiel with a grain of salt, he certainly has an agenda.
Never miss an opportunity for a good libertarian rant, though, at the Journal I guess.
Oh, and it should have read: costs 74K to give her 56K in pay and benefits -- 18K in taxes.
I don't think that's the solution he's looking for, but I didn't hear him offer one.
And Nato is in Afghanistan so I think loads of EU nations are fighting wars. Many Eu nations joined the Iraq war too, so I do not think any American is taking a moral stance over high taxes which a European needs not because their moral conscience is clean.
The guy, as said in many other comments has an agenda. SO it is hardly "Americans" but republicans, or conservatives, or democrats as they may be called in some countries.
Some key numbers, at average wage: US 34.4%, UK 38.8%, Germany 63.3%, France 52.0%, Japan 34.2%, Hungary 71.5%
Obviously, the services different countries "provide" for your income tax vary by country; some countries provide "free" healthcare, some offer high (perhaps sometimes too high) unemployment benefits, while others decide to wage wars instead to protect their interests overseas.
Is it mandatory now to offer health insurance to employees? How has this system of companies arranging for the health insurance emerged? I can only guess: providing health insurance is a way of giving employees a tax free bonus (like a company car, or free food)?
From what I understand, the health insurance situation has arisen due to buying power. It is impossible for Sally to buy her own insurance at the same rate that her company can do it (even ignoring any tax breaks).
But is there a law to set up salaries that way? He cites it as a reason for not hiring, so presumably he could just negotiate salaries post-tax and do away with the problem.
As I understand it, employer-sponsored health insurance is not required, but it is expected in many jobs.
According to the history above, health insurance tax breaks originated with Blue Cross and Blue Shield programs in the 1930s (thought to be progressive because it helped lower-income people). Employer-sponsored health insurance became popular during WWII, when companies weren't allowed to compete on wages, but were allowed to compete on benefits. And then, for some reason (parity with BCBS?), laws were passed in the 1950s that made employer-sponsored health insurance enormously tax-advantaged.
But okay, $59k/44k is one thing. You want to talk about regressive taxes, tell me why I have to pay nearly $2k to employ a part-time person who nets just a little shy of ~$1400 (roughly ~$22k annual gross), and that's without any benefits. Talk about a disincentive for job creation! I'd much rather pay my part-time employee more of that ~$2k, and if I could, I would.
If I give him a $300 bonus one month, he's going to see about $180 of it if it's run through the normal payroll withholding mechanisms. At that level of income, that really is ridiculous.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/08/wall-street-journa...
The author suggests that his company pays $74,000 to get $44,000 into his employee's, Sally's, pocket. The tone used implies that the other $30,000 is purely a waste. The key point conveniently ignored, however, is where that $30,000 goes. He mentions the abstract ideas of state and federal taxes, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Medicare, and Social Security.
If we assume the author would be happy eliminating all taxes and insurance payments, we're left with a range of possibilities; he wants Sally to have between $44,000 and $74,000. Considering the article's purpose is to suggest he's not hiring because he doesn't believe Sally is worth $74,000 and we can eliminate the high-end (let's take of the top 10% and put Sally's max at about $66,000).
Starting from the $44,000 figure. $7,322 of that would have to go toward a supplemental system for Social Security. It's not government backed and Sally has to spend time managing her investments. As we've all recently learned, even without making any mistakes herself, she stands to lose a lot of money if the stock market fails. $1,712 would be spent on supplementing Medicare. The $12,000 in benefits would have to come from somewhere, in this worst-case for Sally, we'll take it out of her pocket. Without paying taxes, Sally must pay however much the privatized school charges her. She must pay the privatized police force to protect her. She must pay the privatized fire station in case there is a fire. She'll pay tolls for every road she uses to get to and from work. I'm sure the author enjoys the ability the company has to lay off workers, so Sally will have to put back some money in case she becomes suddenly unemployed or temporarily disabled. That's $275 for the author today -- but Sally wouldn't have the benefit of a collective pool of funds, so she'd have to build up a buffer very quickly. So far, we're well above $21,309 not counting the costs to which we've failed to attributed any value (police, fire, roads, schools, et cetera). Let's assume those and associated services currently provided by the government are a very reasonable $8,691 per year (many private schools would be beyond Sally's reach). Whereas the author would save $30,000 to put the same $44,000 in Sally's pocket, just to maintain her standard of living today, she would need to easily spend that $30,000 out of her own pocket. Whereas the employer might then be willing to hire someone, Sally wouldn't be willing to work. Well, actually, she wouldn't have any choice but to work or die.
What about the magnanimous author who'll now pay Sally $66,000? Well, she'd bring home $66,000 and immediately spend $30,000 to pay for all the gaps that taxation left. Which means she'll effectively receive $36,000. That sucks for Sally and distills the author's argument down to: he wants to place the burden squarely on the shoulders of the workers so he can save money.
Obviously any employer will only spend as much on an employee as they make from having hired that employee. So, either Sally creates $74,000 in wealth or more OR she doesn't. That's the bottom line. Stop trying to blame taxation when the reality of the proposed system merely punishes the employee to the additional benefit (beyond the value already created by the employee for the company) of the employer.
Also, please note the multitude of public services I failed to mention which are supported with taxation. Research, universities, military, postal services, social services, public health, water, sewage, oversight and regulation... Without these, Sally's standard of living would likely be much worse than it is today.
The postal service is a frequent scapegoat here. Yet, the price of a stamp has been nearly constant when evaluated based on purchasing power and inflation. Further, try doing a cost comparison between FedEx, UPS, and the USPS for the same package. I've worked in shipping and receiving and both FedEx and UPS have more than their fair share of delivery issues and damages. Yet, I get bills and letters in the mail _very_ regularly and reliably. Go figure.
That said, the OA author made points I agree with that it seems unfair and inefficient to require businesses to perform tasks and provide services which are unrelated to their core business, and arguably should be the responsibility of individuals or the government. I hate the fact that businesses are involved in providing health care for employees, it seems horribly inefficient and out-of-place. Businesses should only pay cash to employees, ideally, since that is most efficient and the most transparent and ungameable. Employees should then get health care from the market and/or from the government.