In several ways, traditional health care financing has long been unfair to middle and lower-income insureds. A major problem is monopoly pricing of many services and goods. Although the point is seldom recognized, American-style health insurance greatly aggravates the redistributive effects of...

The US employer-based health insurance tax exclusion created a system of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) with limited insurance choices and transparency that may lock employed households into health plans that are costlier or different from those they prefer to purchase. It may also prevent...

Current tax law prevents workers from trading pre-tax employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) premiums for greater after-tax take-home income. Many workers thus may pay for health plans that are more expensive or have different features from plans they would directly choose for themselves. The tax...

This article explores the hypothesis that the U.S. health care system operates more like a robber baron than like Robin Hood, burdening ordinary payers of health insurance premiums disproportionately for the benefit of industry interests and higher-income consumer-taxpayers. Thus, lower- and...

Even though the U.S. healthcare system exhibits higher administrative costs than any other OECD nation, they have not received substantial attention from policymakers despite their enormous cost and impact on the market. We argue that competition policy could meaningfully reduce these...