While I hate the idea of federally controlled socialized medicine, I find it ironic I have been on socialized medicine in the private sector all my adult life.  In my industry you couldn’t hire somebody without giving group health insurance; you just wouldn’t be competitive otherwise.  So in addition to my salary, my compensation includes a group policy for my family.  I have one office mate with no wife or kids, and one with a wife six kids.  They do the same job and have approximately the same salary.  I figure the single guy is receiving about $15k a year less in compensation because of this “within company” socialism.   I’ve tried to do some digging into how we got into this mess, and from what I can tell insurance started getting linked to employment as a way around wage caps in WW2 (I would love to know more from those that have studied more than I have).  Is there a way for us to unroll this?   Counting your insurance as taxable income would help IF it were coupled to lowering the income tax rate– perhaps part of a flat tax plan?

Couple this with the socialized schooling and tax exemptions you get for dependents, and I wonder just what percentage of our socialist wealth transfer occurs among employed people just based on their number of dependents.