What's especially weird is the number of people here who are fiercely defensive of the arrangement, with the only rationale being it's the status quo. See also car-centric urban design.
Most Americans (roughly 70%) are happy with their health insurance. That's a reason to be defensive other than it "being the status quo".
And I pay more for this, just in terms of my monthly premiums, not to mention all of the out of pocket and deductible costs, than I would in taxes for healthcare in just about any other developed country.
I don't know what metric people are using when saying that they are "happy" with their health insurance, other than comparing it to being uninsured in this country, in which case, sure, it beats that.
[1]: this arrangement is also technically illegal in California, but worked around with a Three Corporations In a Nonprofit Trenchcoat sort of deal. The seams mostly don't show.
The medical system in the U.S. is awful, and it really is broken that it is tied to a job.
A system where you need to be well enough to work to get care to work is obviously not ideal.
Means-testing is just a very inefficient, clumsy way of providing benefits to people and functionally operates as a tax on those who would benefit from the service but would fail the test.
My wife runs a business and employs, typically, only 1 or 2 people; when they started asking for health insurance we found that getting insurance (as a business) was actually not terribly expensive; at the same time my insurance plans have gotten progressively more crappy.
I can't remember, or be bothered to find out -- how expensive is it these days to just get private insurance in the USA if you've got 3 hideously expensive pre existing conditions? I have some vague recollection that the obamacare thing requires that insurance companies offer coverage to people without regard to those preexisting conditions, and intuitively that seems "fair" but it's all such a pile of crap it's frustrating to dig through and demotivating. I assume "that's the way they like it."
Take a look at your state's healthcare marketplace site. You should be able to browse plans if you put in your county/zip code and participant ages. Marketplace plans can't charge based on health history, and at least in my area, they all seem to cover the minimum required services and nothing else; they compete on networks and copay/coinsurance.
It's not the giant morass of pain that it used to be, but it's still somewhat of a pain, and often employer based plans are better; especially in terms of networks and out of area coverage.