Most of what we care about is access to health care, not whether you receive it. More than half the population has almost no contact with the health care system from one end of the year to the other because they're healthy. So our focus on insurance, I think, is a bizarre public policy phenomenon.
Economist Ed Dolan of the Niskanen Center talks about employer-based health insurance with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Dolan discusses how unusual it is relative to other countries that so many Americans get their health insurance through their employer and the implications of that phenomenon for the structure of the health insurance market. Dolan explores the drawbacks of this structure and makes the case for what he calls Universal Catastrophic Coverage.