'Where is the Outrage over Employer-Sponsored Coverage in the “Rate Shock” Debate?

Adrianna McIntyre at The Incidental Economist:

Where is the outrage over employer-sponsored coverage in the “rate shock” debate?, by Adrianna McIntyre: I’ve been keeping pretty close tabs on the “rate shock” debate... It’s a complicated issue, and prophecies about young adult enrollment, including my own, have relied on broad strokes and guesswork. But one thing in particular has been grating on me: when it comes to complaints about redistribution and overly-generous benefits in health insurance, why is the echo chamber limited to the individual market? Where is the outrage over employer-sponsored insurance? ...

Some 90% of people with private insurance receive it through an employer, and those plans are generally priced using “pure” experience-rating. This means the company serves as one giant risk pool, and a firm’s youngest employees have the exact same insurance premium as their eldest colleagues. The practice has roots in tradition and history; unions started negotiating these kinds of contracts after World War II, and other plans followed suit. But it’s also a matter of law: HIPAA and the ADA prohibit premium variation by health status. Age rating is constrained somewhat—though not entirely—by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Yet, I’ve seen exactly zero Obamacare opponents railing to amend the employer-based practices that require most young healthies to pay more than their “fair share.” No one is plying Congress to amend HIPAA or the ADA so young invincibles can pay premiums appropriate to their health status. No one is calling out employers on their “redistributionist” policies, even though uniform insurance premiums force a substantial transfer from the young to the old. It makes histrionics over Obamacare’s 3:1 age band hard to take seriously. ...

I know many conservative wonks find fault in ties between employment and insurance, but they haven’t injected that into recent critiques. If messaging around rate shock is more than opportunistic hackery—if it’s genuinely about how “health insurance” ought to be conceived—why are they leaving the most prevalent and most redistributive form of private coverage unscathed? Surprise me.