This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 14th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There are numerous ways that workers are hamstrung by our health care system.

One of the big ones is that your health insurance effectively are hamstrung by our health care system.

One of the big ones is that your health insurance effectively evaporates

when you lose a job.

Michael Cannon is author of the health care chapter

in the new Cato Institute book Empowering

the new American worker. We spoke earlier this month.

You and I have talked about this on numerous occasions, but not directly, I suppose, which is the idea of in particular health insurance as something that severely

limits the range of options that a lot of workers have.

Right, the, it's not that health insurance that limits their options, it's federal tax policy that limits

their health insurance options. If a worker wants to take, you know,

$16,000 of their of their compensation package as the form of health benefits from their employer,

the government doesn't tax it, leaves that $16,000 alone.

It's almost like a libertarian paradise because there's no taxation of that $16,000 and

isn't that wonderful.

But if the worker wants to take that $16,000 as cash and choose their own health

insurance rather than have their employer choose it and choose health insurance

that meets their needs rather than their employer's needs. Choose health insurance that stays

with them between jobs so that they don't get sick and then lose their coverage and then

have an uninsured, an uninsurable pre-existing condition. Health insurance, it provides them lifetime insurance rather than for just a period of their life.

...