Employer Health Plans

It's open enrollment for employer sponsored health plans. Which raises the question, why are employers buying insurance for us in the first place?

There is an obvious advantage of scale. The more people in a plan the lower the price for each individual on the plan.

Insurers cannot exclude anyone from the plan if a large group is applying for coverage at once. This means some who may be uninsurable on the individual market could get coverage in the group.

But outside of these advantages, is having health insurance tied to employment more of a problem than a benefit?

What if instead of providing coverage, companies just paid employees more so they could purchase their own plan?

This way when people lose their jobs they have to deal with the loss of income but not necessarily the loss of health coverage.
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