Please Dismantle Employment Captive Healthcare

I would like to thank the health insurance industry for giving me an argument in favor of a government-run health plan.

From the AP:

The insurance industry Tuesday laid down a marker on health care, warning in stark terms that a proposed government insurance plan would dismantle the employer coverage Americans have relied on for a half century and overtake the system.

I am generally against a federal healthcare plan, but industry groups America's Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association have pointed out one good thing about it: It would dismantle employment captive insurance.

See my earlier post about why employment captive insurance is so bad.

I don't want a federal program, but I have hopes that such a program would help the poor. The program’s availability to the middle class would be a fig leaf to distinguish the program from outright charity. Responsible middle class people would probably use it and then use their own money in cases where they want better service, just as the middle class uses Social Security's disability / life insurances and retirement benefits as a small supplement to products they buy in the market.

I suspect (but will never know) insurers would protest louder if we had a libertarian government making open plans to dismantle the employment captive system and encourage true competition at an individual level.