"your own individual plan... which (even with Obamacare in its current state) is going to cost you on average significantly more than an employer offered plan"
I don't disagree with your greater point about the US system, but my experience is that ACA individual policies were about the same cost as what I can purchase as an (admittedly very small) employer.
If you buy an ACA plan, you're in a much larger risk pool than any individual employer can provide.
I believe you're right and I didn't make my reasoning clear in my original post, but in the case of employee-provided healthcare insurance it is common (though not universal, YMMV especially based on company size) for the employer to cover some portion of the actual per-employee cost which means a lower out of pocket cost for the employee (though not the employer).
This is another aspect of our current system that has some negative side effects -- a lot of people don't realize what the actual overall cost of their healthcare insurance is. I currently pay $46 per two-week pay period for good single-person PPO coverage (of course the actual cost to the employer is significantly more), so $92 a month. That cost becomes my mental baseline for insurance, and then I go look at the cost of ACA plans which apparently average $328 and that seems insane, over 3x the cost!!! Thanks, Obama!!! (of course, it isn't really more, the overall cost of my prior coverage has just been obscured by the old system where my employer subsidized me).
But then your comment reduces to "paying for your own healthcare is more expensive than getting someone else to pay for it for you" or perhaps even "it's nice to have people give you money."
Not that it isn't true, mind you, but given all of the policy debate around the ACA that's happening it seems a little unfair to bring the ACA into it at all.
I don't disagree with your greater point about the US system, but my experience is that ACA individual policies were about the same cost as what I can purchase as an (admittedly very small) employer.
If you buy an ACA plan, you're in a much larger risk pool than any individual employer can provide.