Bloomberg announced last week that it is ending the health benefit it provides employees.
Beginning in 2027, employees are being asked to shoulder more of the cost of their health insurance without gaining ownership of the policy for which they’re paying.
Bloomberg isn’t alone. Becker’s Payer Issues reports that 51% of employers are “likely or very likely” to make plan design changes that will shift more cost sharing to employees in 2026. Employers are increasingly taking more of your income to pay for the health benefits they choose, all while narrowing benefits and offering an insurance plan design that doesn’t suit everyone — especially Generation Z.
Gen Z thrives on autonomy, seamlessness, and innovation, all hallmarks of the digital age and increasingly prevalent gig economy. Imagine a world where we could choose from a robust health insurance market and have access to tax-free money to purchase coverage tailored to our lives.
Portable health insurance plans bring us closer to that reality.
Portable plans are similar to employer-funded individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements. Both plans allow employees to pick their own plans. Except with portable insurance, you can take that coverage with you from job to job because the policy belongs to you instead of your employer.
U.S. tax code currently allows employers to control almost $1 trillion of employee compensation each year. This persists because the tax code rewards it — not because it’s the best way.
Workers collectively face billions in additional taxes if they do not allow their employers to control money they earn, making everyone — but especially Gen Z — less professionally flexible.
One in 3 Gen Zers plan to change jobs in the next year. Workers of my generation are freelancing, side-hustling, switching jobs, and treating career growth like creative portfolios. We want, and often need, to earn a living outside the traditional path. Yet recent Gallup polling found that 24% of U.S. workers stay in jobs they want to leave because they’re afraid of losing health coverage.
Employer-sponsored coverage distorts consumer and market behavior, especially when leaving a job means risking coverage, changing networks, or facing higher costs on the ACA marketplace. The answer to high healthcare costs isn’t more subsidies, but making healthcare more flexible so price signals can correct themselves.
With portable plans, insurers would have more flexibility to compete on different plan designs such as multiyear policies, deductibles that roll over, savings that accumulate over time, and chronic disease management that isn’t interrupted when you change jobs.
Portable plans are growing in popularity, with pilot programs cropping up in many states this year. Last spring, Republican senators wrote a letter to the Labor Department urging the removal of regulatory barriers that discourage companies from offering portable benefits. Bills in West Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kansas, Georgia, Idaho, Florida, and New Hampshire all demonstrate a grand exodus from employer-sponsored health insurance in favor of more freedom and agency in healthcare.
Recent portable insurance bills differ in a few ways: which benefits count (some limit to health insurance, others include things like life insurance and disability), who owns and controls the benefits, worker classification (independent contractors versus full-time employees), and tax treatment.
To maximize employee benefits, some starters are removing the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health plans and instead offering the exclusion directly to employees. So far only bills in Kansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia do this. Kansas even goes a step further, offering a state income deduction for its portable benefit plan.
Employer-sponsored insurance was an accident of history, not a market outcome anyone chose. Obamacare then attempted to manage adverse selection through mandates, subsidies, regulated risk pools, and risk adjustment. It failed.
Portable insurance offers another possibility: broaden individual choice and risk pools while gradually restoring the price signals. Eventually, provider networks could be broader at lower prices, giving Gen Z the flexibility we need to succeed in the modern economy.
WHY GEN ALPHA WILL MAKE GEN Z LOOK CONSERVATIVE
The current system disincentivizes risk. But America needs Gen Z to take risks: invest in innovation, launch a business, move themselves into better opportunities. An employee who can leave, start, freelance, or pivot has more leverage — creating a national economy with greater momentum.
Freedom in healthcare looks like making your own choices from a variety of options and having the permission to succeed on your own terms. If the American economy is going to reward initiative, it cannot keep punishing mobility.
Alexandra Stinson reports on American healthcare and was a spring 2026 Burton C. Gray Memorial intern at Reason.