Health benefits and WWII

I've repeatedly called the employer-based healthcare system a "relic of the industrial era", which just goes to show what I know. I hadn't heard this:

One of the most ridiculous things about the current American health care system is the accidental legacy of the price controls of WWII which led companies to promote health care benefits since they could not compete on price. The weird and unnecessary tie between health care benefits and working distorts all sorts of possible ways of dealing with lack of insurance.

It's almost as if government intervention with price controls can have unintended consequences.

But pro-government progressives now blame insurance companies instead of the market distortions that created this mess? Say it ain't so!

Basically we'd be much better off if employers would abolish all benefits and negotiate monetary compensation only, letting people purchase their own plans from some kind of health insurance exchange. That would foster more valuable competition, with people learning which insurers are the trustworthy ones and which aren't. Just like competition works everywhere else.

Of course, if you want to make sure people aren't denied on the basis of pre-existing conditions, you have to legislate that. There will be resistance, because it will make the cost of everyone else's care go up. But it's much better than forcing the same outcome with a national, non-market system like Britain or Canada's that accomplishes the same thing by obfuscating health costs (i.e. collecting taxes instead of premiums, and not allowing people to purchase the level of care they want).