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Comment by buddylw | Hacker News Reader

Yet another example where perverse incentives lead to unintended effects.

The problem with Obamacare is that it doesn't address the primary problem: health insurance is tied to employment.

Until we get past that we are going to have a broken system where the customer is not the customer. The insurance company and then your employers are the customer.

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I think you got it wrong. The exchanges may be a first step in separating healthcare from employers. If I can buy into an exchange there is less risk for me. The risk is spread throughout the exchange. As a want-a-be entrepreneur I think the current system stinks

I agree. The current model stifles entrepeneurship and ties people with chronic illnesses to their jobs (or their spouses/parents/etc with jobs).

It might be a step, but the obvious first step is remove the laws that make employer based insurance so much more attractive. Specifically the huge tax advantage, and group insurance laws. The whole ACA is a really complicated partial fix to the employer - healthcare problem.

Linking your ability to see a doctor for a reasonable fee to your ability to find a decent employer strikes me as a monumentally short-sighted decision (if one was ever really made) on our part.

The problem is that quality healthcare didn't become an entitlement over night. For many, many years most (all?) people didn't have access to quality healthcare. Over time more and more people got access to quality healthcare until the number of people reached a critical point where people decided they were entitled to it. Before it was viewed as an entitlement it made sense for businesses to offer it as a perk.

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