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Don Klipstein Don Klipstein is offline
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Default OT. How much does it cost the average American (family) for health care insurance.

In ,
Smitty Two wrote:
In article ,
(Doug Miller) wrote:

In article
, Smitty
Two wrote:

According to the National Coalition on Health Care, $13,000.

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

"The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close
to $13,000 a year, and the employee foots about 30 percent of this cost."

--x--x--x--x--

Based on personal observation, government employees of almost any type
have excellent health insurance policies paid by the employer, with
funds graciously provided by my taxes. Those policies cover vision and
dental as well as regular insurance, and include the employee's family.

Private companies often cover only 50% of the cost of the premium, and
if the employee wants insurance for the rug rats or the spouse, the
entire premium comes from his or her own pocket.


The entire premium is coming out of the individual's pocket anyway, even in
employer-sponsored plans. Every dollar the employer spends on purchasing
health insurance is a dollar that is unavailable for spending on salaries or
wages.

It is likewise a convenient fiction that the employer pays half of the FICA
premium. Nope. The employee pays all of it -- half in direct payroll
deduction, and half in the form of a reduced salary.


Well, if we're segueing into "convenient fictions," here's another one:
Governments have to pay high salaries and provide luxury-class benefits
in order to attract qualified workers away from private industry. In
truth, the pay and benefit scales are often double what industry pays
for comparable skill sets. The city, county, and state here are all
going broke, and it's due in large measure to absolutely obscene wages.


Though I would like to bitch about salaries of municipal and state
department heads and members of various legislatures and governmental and
quasi-governmental boards, it appears to me that the top few executives
and most VPs (not just CEO) of most of the Fortune 1000 companies and a
majority of specialist MDs make much more still.

I doubt that Fortune 500 companies have to compensate their CEOs tens of
megabucks annually and their VPs and other top executives megabucks
annually for skill sets that run the companies into the ground and/or
require multigigabuck taxpayer bailouts. Most foreign large companies,
unlike most USA ones, pay much less than this for executives whose
companies succeed, and less still for executives of companies who don't.

- Don Klipstein )