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Setting EU labor BS aside.

Don't hire as "permanent employees", hire them as contractors (and offer higher rate).

There are lots of people who are quite happy with this arrangement. People get more money, the cost is the same. Employer gets flexibility. Everybody is happy except the tax collector :).

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Besides this being unfair to the rest of society, if your country happens to have a working social/medical system, being a contractor can be dramatically worse for an employee later on.

Part of what I saw was that anyone with means (office workers, contractors, SWEs, etc) opted instead of supplementary or entirely private health insurance. When I asked many people why they didn't use their national healthcare system, they scoffed at me and said it was great for emergency care and only that.

This was rather eye opening for me. Is it good? Probably not, but that was the reality I saw.

That's not how it works in practice.

In practice you pay 40% or more in taxes and the person who wants to get professional help, still uses private services.

Universal health care is only for the poor

> tax collector

cough IR35

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