What if businesses weren’t allowed to deduct the cost of employee health insurance benefits? And what if businesses were required to show the employees how much they pay for their benefits and offer the choice for the employee to either keep receiving the group insurance benefit or to get that same amount as a raise?
Would that kill the value of group health insurance all together? Take a typical school district in Colorado. If you were a healthy 27 year old teacher and you had the choice of paying $647/month for health insurance or taking that as a raise, what would you do? If you saw that you could get a similar underwritten health insurance policy for $176, do you think you would rather use some of your extra $647/month to pay for the underwritten policy and just pocket the extra?
It’s a tough choice. What would you do? What would be the consequences for everyone else employed by the school district?
