What should employers do about healthcare? In the US, they have often treated health benefits as a necessary evil. They have focused on the rising cost of providing health insurance benefits and taken aggressive steps to bring costs down, or at least to slow the rate of increase.

In many other countries, employers have ignored healthcare altogether, leaving it to government or dutifully paying their mandated health contributions. Many US employers are dropping health benefits or hoping for reforms that will transfer responsibility for health insurance to individuals or to the government.