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JD Supra reports:

“Background

Healthcare coverage became an employer-offered benefit during World War II as the result of the federal government’s wage and price controls^[1]. Since that time, Medicare has become an important part of how healthcare is provided to individuals who reached the age of 65, who became disabled, or who were diagnosed with end stage renal disease. When Medicare entered the mix, a number of additional rules to protect those eligible for Medicare were also added to protect the Medicare system. Now, an employer seeking to contain health benefit costs must consider not only tax considerations, but Medicare and ERISA and other requirements. Thus, when the federal government agencies started designing a new way to facilitate the purchase of individual health insurance, they had to design around decades of rules, regulations, and policy considerations in the move back to a pre-World War II individual obligation to purchase health insurance to avoid violating the interim changes in legal requirements.

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