[quote=UCGal]flu – clearly you haven’t worked for scrooge like employers.
I worked for an employer that REQUIRED you to go on your spouses insurance if they had an insurance option. You were not allowed to put yourself, your family, etc. on the company plan – even if the spouses insurance was crappy or more expensive. This was challenged by more than one employee – but the company held firm on this policy. (It was a small company – so everyone knew who was married, who’s spouses worked, etc.)
My husband’s employer covers 50% of a crappy plan for the employee. It covers NOTHING for spouse and kids. The 50% premium is more expensive than adding him to my family coverage. Unfortunately, this means I can’t quit my job, ever, since I have the family insurance. This is not the first firm he’s worked for that had limited or no contribution for spouse/family.
If you have any kind of pre-existing condition at all – it has historically been hard to get insurance. My best friend has several pre-existing conditions. When she was laid off from the dot-com in the dot-bust years she found contract/consulting work… No benefits, but it covered her mortgage. But she needed insurance so she also took a job with a local grocery store for $7/hour – for the benefits. This meant she had fewer hours for consulting (which paid better)… a total catch22. A few years later, after getting a good job then being recruited to a start up with the promise they’d give her bennies before her cobra ran out… they changed their minds… Fortunately WA state had passed a law that said if you had no lapse of coverage, you couldn’t be denied…
I guess I’ve seen too many situations that don’t fit your ideal world scenario, Flu.[/quote]
Well, as I previously stated, I do understand how difficult it would be to get insured with a pre-existing condition. I really do know…And I’m not slamming the entire health bill per se, but I was just wondering about why a 26yr adult with some part time and health can’t get affordable insurance. Since then I’ve learning from reading what you are bearish are saying about companies charging the full premium for dependent coverage. I was only looking at it from the angle that employers have paid for both employee and family insurance plans and didn’t think about companies that didn’t really pay any portion of the dependent coverage. That does put an interesting perspective on this, though at the same time it’s still are risk that the employer is taking on IF something should happen. IE autho premiums are paid in full by employee, if something major does happen to the dependent, future premiums for the entire company will be impacted. Interestingly, there’s probably some sweet spot statistically between getting more people to pay the premium and the risk of providing more coverage.
What does insurance appear to be like gambling with a bunch of odds?
