People hate it once they have some bad experience with a claim or something expensive not being covered. But until that happens 'comfortable with the illusion someone else is paying for it' prevails over the hypotheticals. And of course those stories of people falling through the cracks between structures is something that only happens to other people...

I think the fundamental problem is that people by and large say they like their insurance, which for most is what they get at their jobs. We saw it with the ACA both with Obama's promise people could keep what they had, and the GOP pounce when that turned out not to be 100% true.

My suspicion is what's really at play is the tendency of humans to value what they already have more than an uncertain gain. Our system's complexity only reinforces it. People know they have something with the employer model but in my experience don't actually understand much about what that something is or the shortcomings of it. IMO the politics are a reflection of that reality rather than a cause.

I see it as the distortion from which most other distortions arise. But to your point fixing it is hard, and nothing is harder in a democracy than selling some short term pain, no matter the necessity for long term gain. That's especially the case with something like healthcare benefits where all change is understandably scary.

The problem here seems less of a religious freedom v. reproductive rights and more another bullet to the list of shortcomings in our healthcare system. If employers weren't the primary providers of benefits the issue goes away completely.