Health insurance as a collective-action problem
Just a tiny thought, inspired by a puff piece about Wal-Mart: any individual store, such as Wal-Mart, may oppose insuring its employees, but that’s only because it suffers a competitive disadvantage if it does. If every one of its competitors were likewise required to insure its employees, I suspect that Wal-Mart would object much less.
There’s a race to the bottom, in this way, on the benefits that Wal-Mart and its competitors offer to their employees. Which is exactly the opposite situation to that experienced at higher-paying companies: they often fight one another to offer cushier benefits to draw more employees.
The way to stop the race to the bottom is to establish a floor above which everyone has to stay.
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