Employer Sponsored Health Insurance - Is There Competition?

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Amazon, JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway joined forces to establish a new healthcare company that would manage benefits for several hundred thousand employees of these three companies. But there's some skepticism as to whether or not this will really work. "Just because you know an industry is underperforming ... doesn't mean you have a successful strategy," one commentator said.

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.