It's deductible no matter who pays. I've had a private policy paid for by myself for my family for years. I deduct the cost of that from my taxes.
The bigger issue is people generally are accustomed to larger/bigger plan coverage from employers, and employers contribute a portion, skewing the 'real' price.
High deductible policies help A LOT, but I fear those are going to be harder to use under Obamacare (for seemingly ridiculous reasons). We're paying $330/month for a high deductible policy with $5k deductible. Would be close to $250/month for a $10k I think. And, I think, that's likely how it should be, vs paying $800-$1000/month for a plan with a low (or no!) deductible.
I've had friends say "well, I don't have $10k just sitting around in case there's a medical bill!" A few rebuttals to that mentality:
1. Some of these same people have no issues with financing new cars every few years.
2. You'd have $10k in savings much faster if you were only paying $400/month instead of $1400/month for insurance.
3. We had a big issue a couple years ago, and had an emergency room visit. That was January - we didn't get a bill until April, and it had a number to call to work out a payment plan - you can finance your emergency medical expenses.
I realize these numbers don't work out for everyone in all cases, but neither does employer-provided health care.
That does not square with this[1]:
If you are not self-employed, and you don't work for a company that provides health insurance with a cafeteria plan, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows you to count health and dental insurance premiums as part of the 7.5% of your adjusted gross income that has to be spent on health care before any out-of-pocket medical expenses can be deducted.
I am self-employed, as is my wife. Most people I know with a spouse with insurance choose to stay on that instead, but it's often not really a better deal - it's just habit/convenience.
Also, you can make a one time rollover from a 401K or IRA to an HSA account. So if they switched to the HSA they could start it off by rolling over the amount of their deductible from their retirement account to their HSA account.
The bigger issue is people generally are accustomed to larger/bigger plan coverage from employers, and employers contribute a portion, skewing the 'real' price.
High deductible policies help A LOT, but I fear those are going to be harder to use under Obamacare (for seemingly ridiculous reasons). We're paying $330/month for a high deductible policy with $5k deductible. Would be close to $250/month for a $10k I think. And, I think, that's likely how it should be, vs paying $800-$1000/month for a plan with a low (or no!) deductible.
I've had friends say "well, I don't have $10k just sitting around in case there's a medical bill!" A few rebuttals to that mentality:
1. Some of these same people have no issues with financing new cars every few years.
2. You'd have $10k in savings much faster if you were only paying $400/month instead of $1400/month for insurance.
3. We had a big issue a couple years ago, and had an emergency room visit. That was January - we didn't get a bill until April, and it had a number to call to work out a payment plan - you can finance your emergency medical expenses.
I realize these numbers don't work out for everyone in all cases, but neither does employer-provided health care.