The October issue of Forbes has a symposium on health care that's worth a look. There's also a cartoon--I can't find it online--that captures some of the distortions in health insurance policy today.

The scene is a business office. There's a manager of some sort and a prospective employee. The manager asks "Now, would you prefer health insurance -- or a salary?"

There are several points that could be made from this cartoon.

One, health insurance -- and primarily health insurance, not other forms of insurance -- is tied up with one's employer.

Two, money is fungible. A person's compensation will be all cash, or all insurance, or some mixture. (For the moment I am omitting things such as Social Security, pensions, and the like.) Unions and employees who think that they can somehow force employers to pony up more money for insurance with no adjustment to salary are mistaken.

Three, it's likely that the mix of compensation is changing over time. There has been some angst lately over (relatively) stagnating incomes over time. Yet the Economic Mobility Project, the latest investigation of inter-generational income growth, did not include the value of health insurance. In other words, our employment-based, third-party system is not only contributing to increasing health insurance costs. It's also, indirectly, fueling populist and egalitarian sentiment that threatens economic growth--based on a misunderstanding brought on by our insurance paradigm.