"Crunch Time" for Some Truths About ObamaCare--2

In reply to my comments under the NJ Star-Ledger op-ed For Obamacare enrollment in NJ, it's crunch time, Mary had a couple of couple of replies. My answers follow:

So don't enroll in Obamacare if you hate it so. Pay the penalty. That's your right.But you are probably covered by your employer, right?

In other words, pay the extortion.

Thanks to government coercion, you are either beholden to your employer or are captive to a government program. The individual was subsequently squeezed out. ObamaCare is government posing as champion of its own victims. We don't need more coercion (the same poison). We need to get government coercion out of our healthcare lives.

Mary, on conjecture that employer-provided health insurance will whittle away in favor of government plans:

"only 20% of people will get their healthcare through their employers"
That's a good thing. Then no one will ever again desperately tied to their employer for heath care.
Many have held on to lousy jobs because of employer health care. Never again.

The employer-based system is a major cause of the problems (like pre-existing conditions) in pre-ObamaCare healthcare. It was created by government policy decades ago. A few tweaks in the law could have fixed that problem, making health insurance individually-owned, competitive, and portable, like life, auto, and homeowners insurance. Instead, we got a massive new, rights-violating bureaucracy. ObamaCare was never meant to do anything but increase political control of our healthcare.

And keepnitrealinnj chimed in:

so in the future Obamacare will "free" me from having to have a job just for healthcare benefits by providing a place where i can buy healthcare on my own.
has anyone bothered to think how you'll pay for the healthcare you would now purchase on your own? i guess you'll still need that lousy job to pay the those premiums and deductibles after all.
oh, i forgot though, the money that corporations save in healthcare costs will be passed onto the employees. and if you believe that........................

"the money that corporations save in healthcare costs will be passed onto the employees."

Precisely. The money spent by employers on employee health insurance is part of the employee's compensation, and rightfully belongs to the employee. Any transition from employer-based to individual insurance should include a provision that employers hire an independent auditor to inform the employee how much money the employer spends on his healthcare, and then deposit that money in an employee HSA. It's only fair. A corporation that simply pockets the money [is in effect] unilaterally cutting the employee's pay, and is thus guilty of breach of contract.

This last comment that employers be required to provide an audit may be questioned on individual rights grounds. However, unwinding government controls is often more than simply repealing a regulation or law. Getting away from employer-based, or third-party-payer, health insurance is one of them. 

Corporations certainly have a right to cut an employee's pay by mutual agreement. But if they are going to do it, it should be consistent with the employer-employee contract, whether the contract is explicit or implied. Corporations should not be able to use decontrol to make an end run around that contract to score a windfall. If they're want to cut the employee's compensation, the employee should know it, and how much. 

Related Reading:

Blame the Third-Party-Payer System, Not the Free Market, for Cancer Patient's Woes

The Problem of the "Unemployed and Uninsured"