Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, recently described in the Chicago Tribune as “a trusted ally of former President Barack Obama and chief architect of the Affordable Care Act” has proposed in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) a new “Affordability Index” to measure trends in the affordability of employer-provided health coverage.  Tracking the affordability of employer-sponsored insurance (which I will shorthand as ESI) is certainly worthwhile and important given that over half of the nation’s population relies on such coverage.

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