Maybe someday we'll get to the point where we realize that it's economically better for everyone to have single-payer health insurance in this country.
I think with the ACA, some small business can claim a tax credit for providing health insurance to their employees, but I'm not 100% sure about that part.
Compare this to a individuals wanting health insurance - if they're young and healthy they're less likely to want to pay much for insurance, which leaves older and sicker people to pay higher and higher premiums. Of course this is really only an issue with privatized insurance and is a great argument for having a single-payer solution.
That's NOT what adverse selection is. That's simply actuarial pricing - everyone pays for their own risk.
Adverse selection is caused by information disadvantage - the party buying insurance has information the insurance company does not have or is unable to incorporate into the price. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection
The main cause for adverse selection in health insurance markets are regulations against pricing in various forms of pre-existing conditions.
It's absolutely an adverse selection problem - insurance companies, as you say, can't necessarily price based on your existing health condition (not only because of regulations, but also because of asymmetrical information which is too costly, if not impossible to obtain).
As a result, healthy people will choose not to purchase health insurance, since due to the adverse selection problem, there doesn't exist a mutually beneficial transaction for both parties (insurance policies have to price for the average due to the lack of health data, which is economically disadvantageous for the healthy to take). And thus begins the adverse selection death spiral[1]
Initially, it wasn't obvious this was a legal tax loophole, but the law was amended to explicitly allow it.
Now it's very hard to change, because getting health insurance from your employer makes you tied to your job. Even with the new health insurance exchanges, getting insurance through your employer is a pre-tax benefit, but if you buy on your own, it's with after-tax money.
Edit: I've only seen what it costs for me personally, a single engineer in my 30's and a non-smoker. It's around $200/month for the catastrophic coverage. I vaugely recall paying around $65/month in my 20's pre-ACA. I know there's a hockey stick, though, so I expect 2 adults in their 50's with 4 children would add up. Again, this is for an HSA high-deductible plan.
10X is a bit of an exaggeration, it's more like 4X. about 250 for a young single person up to over 1000 for a family.
As a fiftysomething high-cost employee, I am aware of this in negotiation. May be illegal or immoral, but I can't blame potential employers for factoring this into the equation.
But, I feel I am under used and under paid. The things they want me to do is too easy. My working life is easy for me, and I want to do battle. So, I am training myself with by finishing on 2-3 Coursea classes per year (math, ML, SNA,..), attending workshops and Meetups in the valley. I worked 10-12 per day for many years now.
It works, I have fair knowledge on new areas and hands on development skill now. I get average 2-3 Linkedin head hunter requests per month for link or discussion job opportunities. I turned most of them down, because some of them too narrow scoped and I also do not want to embarrass myself: I gave my links/phone number to some, but they never call me back.
I will be 69 years old in few months. It took me a little efforts to get here.
No problem, I will create my own battle ground. I am not done yet.
But thank you for the numbers. An extra 9K a year doesn't really sound that much to pay for experience but I guess penny pinching is the order of the day for too many managers.