You seem to have taken as a given the idea that companies, like parents to children, or medieval lords to their vassals, should bear responsibility for their employees' health costs. Otherwise, the company is 'freeloading'.
Yet the point of this study seems to be that employer-centric health-arrangements prevent new business formation.
Let's assume new business formation is something we want to maximize. (New businesses are how our culture rapidly searches for new productive arrangements, and countries with lower rates of business-formation tend to stagnate on lots of other things too.)
Then we have to get away from the cultural expectation that the employer is the direct payer/purchaser of health costs.
Whether the responsibility moves to the national government ('single-payer'), or other governmental bodies, or individuals/families, or other civic/voluntary/religious associations is a separate issue. It has to get away from companies, or else we're losing out on business-formation (and job-mobility) that we need.
You're reading too much into my post. Employer-based health insurance is a terrible idea. Single-payer is IMO the only reasonable choice, but employer-based private insurance is just about the worst conceivable option. Unfortunately, it is deeply embedded.
My point was that the only reason the current system hasn't completely killed new business formation is that employees and founders are able to freeload. Freeloading takes a broken system and makes it even more unfair and dysfunctional.
Fair enough; with your clarification I can see what you meant.
Still, what you call 'freeloading' I see as local approximations of a more-logical system, where someone else – anyone else – pays rather than companies directly. Since it allows a necessary good thing – business formation – to happen, it looks like a step in a fairer/more-functional direction to me.
Yet the point of this study seems to be that employer-centric health-arrangements prevent new business formation.
Let's assume new business formation is something we want to maximize. (New businesses are how our culture rapidly searches for new productive arrangements, and countries with lower rates of business-formation tend to stagnate on lots of other things too.)
Then we have to get away from the cultural expectation that the employer is the direct payer/purchaser of health costs.
Whether the responsibility moves to the national government ('single-payer'), or other governmental bodies, or individuals/families, or other civic/voluntary/religious associations is a separate issue. It has to get away from companies, or else we're losing out on business-formation (and job-mobility) that we need.