My mom does it-- They could easily live on my (self-employed) Dad’s income alone. However, she has a chronic (but well managed) health problem that makes it hard to get private insurance. She openly admits she works for the insurance.
I also know someone who worked at Starbucks (I think it was them) for the insurance while her husband made six figures as contractor, because their son had a condition that made him uninsurable for any price.
Since one of the most common reasons for bankruptcy in the US is medical debt, insurance is key. I own a small business, and frankly one of the reaons that I offer Health Insurance to my employees is so that I can be covered under a group plan too.
In our case, this is excessively so. Mr. S works for a school district as a custodian. We have the primo insurance that the teachers get, because that’s the only plan that’s offered. At the time he took the job, the district paid 85% of the premiums and he paid 15%. That 85% worked out to the equivalent of $6/hour over and above his wages. Sounds nice, right?
Not so fast. Last year the total insurance premium went up 22%. The district decided that they weren’t going to pay any more for insurance, and told the support staff (which includes custodians and people who earn even less than they do, such as cooks and aides) that the district was freezing its contribution, from now on, at the hard 85% level from last year. In other words, insurance now costs 122% of what it did last year, and now the support staff pays 30% of that total and the district pays 70%. As premiums continue to rise, so will the support staff’s portion, while the district will continue to pay the same dollar amount every year. (The teachers have a different – better – contract, as well as obviously higher pay, so they did not take this hit.)
Meanwhile, do you think pay raises were enough to cover this increase? Heck no. So of course the support staff’s already-low take-home pay went DOWN. Mr. S brings home about $400 every two weeks. You can’t live on that, much less support a family. (None of the support staff are self-supporting on their income alone; they either live off a spouse or have a pension or other income.) So OF COURSE he’s working only for the insurance. For now, anyway. I’m self-employed, so we’d need to shop around to find a decent plan (the last one we had was too barebones). In the meantime we’re taking advantage of this premium plan as much as possible. Mr. S just had a double hernia repair that should end up costing us $0 out of pocket.
Needless to say, the support staff are in negotiations to form a union.
Yeah, gonzo health insurance is great, but you can’t pay the mortgage with it.
I work for a somewhat sub-par salary, mostly because my spouse is included on the coverage for free, and she has a very particular arrangement of prescriptions and services that she needs that has been impossible to cover under other health plans.
So to avoid paying over $500/mo for pills alone, plus additional specialist referrals, we put up with a lower salary.
Sadly, when shopping around for better jobs or other opportunities, health plan deficiencies are a common deal breaker. Employers aren’t receptive to people essentially saying, “Look, your health plan sucks, you are pushing costs onto me that you should be covering and actually did cover 10-15 years ago, so I’d like a 20k bump in salary to cover the extra bills and headaches you are saddling me with”. 
I’m work primarily for the health insurance coverage and retirement benefits offered through a small non profit.
Mr. AdoptaMom is self employed. Before I returned to the work force we were paying in excess of $500 per month for coverage with a $2500 annual deductible per person. Considering that we spend $1000 per month on migraine medication (that was excluded from our privately purchased policy) when he is in a migraine cluster cycle, my health insurance is as or more valuable as the paycheck I bring home. His migraine meds cost us $90.50 per month now out of pocket + his premium of $180 per month to add him to my policy. This doesn’t even address the fact that his brother and father both had colon cancer; therefore he must get screened frequently. That runs us about $300 per year.
Factoring in my work clothing, a maid, gas & insurance for my car, and work appropriate clothing, the insurance my job makes available to us is much, much more valuable that the pittance I bring home every two weeks. Not to mention that the agency puts 9% of my gross salary (not out of my salary, in addition to my salary) into a retirement account every month AND I’m allowed to contribute up to an additional 16% - pre-tax of course.
I’d be a fool NOT to work there honestly.
I agree that is absolutely essenential.
Oregon’s own Senator Ron Wyden has a plan that I’m actually pretty excited about.
It would mandade that all employers stop offering health coverage and put that money directly into wages instead. Everyone purchases insurance privately. It also mandates community rating by age and zip code, so you can’t be denied for high risk factors. Oh, and a well-established consulting firm estimates that it will save about $1.48 trillion over the next 10 years. (PDF warning on that last link)
I could talk for a long time about what the inefficiencies health insurance (and I should know - my paycheck is based on those inefficiencies) but when there are people whose sole reason for working is to get health insurance you know that we have a broken system.
With some companies, yes, they offer only coverage for the employee. The company I work for, for example, is very small. They can only get the rates they do because of their employee-only coverage; there’s much less risk for a person who is by definition well enough to go to work. Add in a couple of kids with even run-of-the-mill health costs, the premiums for everyone in the group could become high enough that the company couldn’t afford to provide insurance for anyone.
Of course the other side of this, as well as various other posts, is how much of a company/school district/other organization’s expenses should be related to health insurance?
Health insurance, and health care costs get more expensive each year, faster than the rate of inflation.
It’s not that Scarlett67’s complaint that gonzo health insurance doesn’t pay the mortgage is invalid, it’s just that if you insist that the school district pay the increased cost for health insurance each year, where is that money coming from? Teacher salaries? Textbooks? New buildings? Sports Equipment? Higher taxes?
I heard several months ago a story on NPR talking about GM, I think it was, commenting that (while they may have made bad business decisions in their automotive departments) one of the big problems that GM has now in making competitively priced cars is the amout of budget they must dedicate to health insurance (and pension plans).
(bolding added)
I’ll take “new buildings and sports equipment” for $1,000, Alex. There’s always money in the budget for the Almighty Athletics Department, at the same time that the district is crying that there’s no money for the support staff. This very rural district just built a million-dollar sports facility – oh, excuse me, not quite a million because they jiggered the numbers so they wouldn’t have to have a referendum – but “can’t afford” to hire more custodians to maintain said facility, nor to pay the ones they have (who’ve just acquired more work because of said building) a living wage.
I’ll also add that the support staff also asked whether the district couldn’t shop around for a lesser insurance plan, either instead of or in addition to the current plan. The answer was a flat NO. Wouldn’t even consider it. It’s either the super-duper platinum plan or nothing. This same district also attempted to block the formation of a union, saying that the custodians already had a “bargaining unit.” Riiiight. Their idea of bargaining with the staff is putting some crap on the table and saying “Take it or leave it.”
We are not talking about a $20K raise. Mr. S is at work right now (heh), but I think he said it was a $3K increase this past year. That’s just his portion that comes out of his check. Sounds about right; that would mean his take-home went from about $520 to $400 every two weeks. Is a 23% pay cut reasonable, while the district pays the same amount, the asshole jocks who do more than their share to mess up the place get a shiny new building, and the school board president greets the staff on the first day of school with stories about his family’s trip to Aruba? I don’t think so.
(What, me bitter?)
I’m working for the insurance, partly.
I’ve been a professional cook since 1983. In that time, I’ve worked for too many different restaurants to count. Why? Because in most restaurants there is simply no compelling reason to remain any longer than the job interests me:
• No health insurance
• No retirement plan
• No paid vacation
• When your immediate superior is the owner, there’s no room for advancement
I’ve been in pretty good health all my life. I can’t even remember the last time I called in sick to work, and so haven’t thought about insurance that much. I’m also unmarried and childless. However, I haven’t seen a dentist since I was 21, the last year my parents’ policy covered me, because I simply could never afford it. And my teeth are bad now. I turned 40 last year, and I’ve read about the things that start going wrong after 40. I’ve also been getting those letters from the Social Security Administration telling me how much I’ll be getting in benefits when I retire, and I’ve looked at those and said, “Holy $#@! I can’t live on that!”
So after I was laid off from my job cooking for yet another locally-owned restaurant, I took myself down to a local corporate hotel and applied for a cooking job in their restaurant. They didn’t need any cooks, but they needed a dishwasher and offered me the job. My first reaction was, “You gotta be kidding me!” (not out loud, though!). I didn’t want to wash dishes after cooking for 23 years.
But then the interviewer mentioned the health insurance, and the 401k plan. I realized that the dishwasher pay wasn’t much lower than what I made cooking for local restaurants in this skinflint town, and those benefits sounded good. So I went ahead and accepted the job. I consoled my ego with the knowledge that I could probably move into a cooking job when one opened up.
So I may be a dishwasher now, but the embarassment is offset by the fact that I have full medical, dental, vision, and prescription coverag, a retirement plan, and a paid vacation. And it’s a union job. And I have all sorts of room for advancement should I choose to pursue another direction within the company. And it’s a relatively no-stress job, which cooking isn’t 
I spent quite a while working mostly for the health insurance and pension benefits. I liked the money, and wanted raises, but the $150-200 I actually got to keep each week ( after taxes, child-care and pension and health insurance contributions) didn’t make much of a difference. What did make a difference was that I paid about $10/ month for health insurance about another $100 toward a pension , and not a penny for prescription, optical or dental coverage. My husband’s jobs never provided a pension, prescription, optical or dental coverage and his share of the premiums for health insurance would have been about $400/month.
Why are you excited about this plan? It sounds terrible. Company insurance plans have the benefit of group rates. People buying the same insurance coverage as indivduals would pay much more. So the company stops paying $10,000 a year per employee to the insurance companies and gives the employees the $10,000. The employees get $10,000 more in salary but now have to pay for a $16,000 a year insurance policy to get the same coverage. The company didn’t make a dime, the employee came out behind, and the insurance company got $6000 more for the same amount of coverage.
Let me guess who donated to the Wyden for Senate campaign.
I have a coworker who falls under this category. The difference is that she cannot go FT for various reasons, so she works 40 hours/week at PT pay. Our company’s health insurance deduction is almost half of her weekly paycheck :eek:
Speaking of cutting costs, we had it rather cushy before our company was bought out – the payroll deduction for a FT worker was around $40/week if single, $80/week if your spouse was included. I don’t remember the amount if one had the family plan. Current Employer does not offer a family plan. As others have mentioned, CE won’t cover a spouse if said spouse’s employer offers health insurance. The weekly deduction is almost twice as much as it was before. We also have to pay a $20/week penalty if we partake in what CE calls “unhealthy behaviors”, like smoking.
But yeah, “I have this job only for the insurance” is a common theme at CE.
Actually, I didn’t donate to anyone 
And the whole point of community rating is that your whole demographic is a “group”. The idea is that once all insurers are in the individual policy market then competition will bring the premium price down.
Most likely our current trend of gonzo insurance with first-dollar or low-deductible coverage will be more than most people want to pay for, but if you do the math a high-deductible plan will actually limit your out-of-pocket exposure in most cases.
I’ve got to go for now, but I’ll be back to post more later
I was implying that the insurance companies donated to Wyden’s campaign.
Other than the fact that it makes conditions less favorable to insurance companies, I can’t see any possible justification for making it illegal for companies to offer group health insurance to their employees. It’s an idea everyone can oppose - conservatives can hate it as unwarranted government interference in private enterprise and liberals can hate it as denying individuals the right to organize themselves and take collective action.
It’s very common. I can’t say anyone in my family works for the insurance because we’re all just that freakin’ poor, but I know several people who DO work for the insurance.
Me, personally, I can’t work for the insurance - the insurance my work offers is too damn expensive. They want $100 out of every paycheck for me and $175 for each dependent. If I covered myself, my husband, and his daughter, I’d have no paycheck left. So I just make do without insurance, which just involves a whole lot of praying I don’t get hurt.
Now, I do have supplemental accident insurance through a company called Colonial, and I’d work for that insurance, except that it’s so cheap and I can take the policy with me when I leave. It’s pretty good accident insurance, and I also have the cancer insurance so my annual gyno appointment is taken care of.
~Tasha
My husband is in the military for the insurance and retirement. He works there for 20 years and we get insurance and half his salary for the rest of our lives. He makes pretty good money, too, but if it weren’t for the insurance, I don’t know if we would stick with it. We haven’t paid a dime out of pocket for medical expenses–other than over the counter stuff–for the past 6 years. People with children have even greater incentive to stay in the service. It’s a pain in the ass, but I guess most jobs are.
My wife makes really good money considering the work she does… she bartends at a fine dining establishment maybe 20 hours/week. She brings home around $800 doing so. That’s enough to pay all of our bills, but she can’t get insurance through the restaurant.
I hadn’t had a real job since '97. I’ve been self employeed, making a ton of money through the internet, but that business has now dried up.
Mainly for insurance purposes, I’ve taken a BS job (27k/year… my last real job paid me over 80k, and then my home business paid me over 250k), which offers great insurance, and I’ve chosen the most expensive plans which offer the greatest coverage to us all (wife, daughter, myself), including dental, etc…
As a result, my take-home is now pathetic. But between us, my psoriasis meds and her rheumatoid arthritis meds, are looking like they’ll be over $2k PER MONTH, between us, not to mention our daughter’s healthcare, braces, etc…
My pay is basically doubled or almost tripled by the insurance.
Sounds like you are entitled to be a little bitter. Money is being spent in ways that show that the welfare of the support staff is not a priority. That’s OK, except that without the support staff, the school district would have difficulty functioning. And certainly the suggestion that the district could or should make available a health care plan which is more affordable for the support staff sounds reasonable.
What strikes me as unreasonable is the notion that* whatever* the health insurance costs are, the school district should be responsible for them (because they have been responsible in the past), and if they aren’t, the district is dropping the ball. As health care costs and health insurance costs skyrocket, sooner or later something has to give.
There’s another reform I’m interested in - allowing individuals and businesses alike to buy insurance across state lines.
The insurance still will be regulated, but competition among different state regulations will help keep costs in check, and allow for shopping for cheaper policies or ones with better coverage, or both.