We need to flip flop who pays for education and health care

Most people who have studied health care end up on the side of consumer pay or government pay. Very few end up on the side of employer pay, mainly because it hides real costs from employees. Healthcare is also only somewhat related to your job. So maybe having people buy healthcare the way we do other insurance makes sense.

On the other hand, higher education is currently student pay. The fact that their degree will make them employable some day is a risk the student is taking. The problem with consumer pay for education is that it makes it much harder for people coming from less privileged backgrounds to get the same education as others, limiting the amount of talented people in our work force. The Income Share Agreement model moves that student risk after they have a job. That’s when they pay a portion of their salary back to the school that got them that job. But maybe the right answer is that the employer bonus should be to pay back your school. In that way, we could move higher education to employer pay, opening up a lot more options for students who wouldn’t be able to afford the most elite careers.