What nobody else I've seen has put quite this way, quite this clearly.
The verbiage on the graf is confusing. Essentially, your wages have flatlined ---, while your total compensation has risen because of your employer's health care costs.
Wondering out loud why the employer would choose to give it to insurance companies rather than you. Answer could be that the actual skyrocketing occurred in a relatively short period of time. A lot of companies, such as my former employer, charged employees more, but not nearly enough to cover their increased costs. I'm also wondering if there hasn't been some tax benefit to doing it this way.
But now, of course, a lot of them are just dropping the benefit. Without increasing the wages, I'd guess. Would love to think someone out there is studying this and has real data. I can dream, can't I?
You could be making $200 more a week — or whatever — if it weren't for this goddam health insurance system. I've heard my former employer allude to it at the bargaining table, but nobody actually came out and gave the numbers.
[M]ost workers think stagnant wages mean their employer is paying them less. They don't know that the main reason for stagnant wages is that their wage increases are going to pay for their health insurance premiums. If they did -- if they realized that compensation is pretty much a zero-sum endeavor and their employers don't so much buy them health insurance as garnish their wages to pay for their health insurance -- you'd probably see a lot more general anger at rising health care costs.
Ezra Klein via Andrew Sullivan.
Some commenters are grousing about the data behind the graf. Me, I don't know. But I'm biased enough to accept what it shows. Should be noted that the full discussion of this cited by Klein is written by Zeke Emmanual, Ram's bro and an Obama advisor on health care. Some progressives don't trust him either. What can I say? There's a debate I'm not part of.
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