In the United States, where health insurance is a profitable, capitalist ventures, delivering the service has become expensive. To assure they have a ready and able workforce, businesses buy health care for their employees, because they know that if they do not purchase the care up front, too many of their employees will not have access to the service and their health, and the company’s profits, will suffer.
Employers, and the businesses they own, have a vested interest in the health of the pool of workers from which they draw their employees. It is as simple as: without healthy workers their businesses would break down. Consequently, it is in their best interests to lobby for the most efficient and effective form of insuring worker health.
If the American people elected to provide themselves universal health care and take that service out of the hands of private insurers, the role of businesses in helping to pay for that system would continue. The way that the health of the employee pool is insured does not change the inherent need of employers to have healthy workers.
It is easy to lose track of the real issue hidden in any debate about health insurance: the health of the people in a shared society. The health of the working class, which provides the brains and brawn for American soft and hard industry, is the most critical piece in assuring profitability. Everything else that capitalist enterprises do, every other aspect of their existence, builds off of a healthy workforce. For this reason, businesses have an ongoing role in paying for the service whether via health insurance companies or the US Government direct.