How important are your health benies??

[TheSpecialist]

Employee benefits typically cost companies 3X what your salary is.

Your employer is supposed to provide you with something telling you what they pay monthly for your insurance. My company sends a document to my house 1 time every year and on it it say's that companies are required to do it. My company pays about 1800/ month for my family coverage. I pay 0. This is why I belong to a union. Health insurance is such an important issue to us, that we would strike over it, and have done so in the past. One reason we went on strike in 98 because they want retirees to start paying a huge portion of theirs.

As a side note, I think one reason health care cost, and insurance rates are so exspensive has to do with useless procedures. Does anyone elses dentist send them a letter around October letting them know the year is almost over, and they have x amount of benefits that have been unused and will dissapear if not used by the end of the year, but to hurry up as appointments are running out?

[PaulS]

Originally Posted by TheSpecialist

As a side note, I think one reason health care cost, and insurance rates are so exspensive has to do with useless procedures. Does anyone elses dentist send them a letter around October letting them know the year is almost over, and they have x amount of benefits that have been unused and will dissapear if not used by the end of the year, but to hurry up as appointments are running out?

That certainly has something to do with it. There is also the mentality of "I paid for it, I'm going to use it", also Dr. who have exp. machines (cat scans) tend to have patients who ave. more procedures that others, hosp/ins. comp. expenses, needless tests so that Drs. don't get sued for missing a diagnosis but probably the biggest exp. (which also effects S. Security when you think about it) is the general advances in medicine which keeps people alive longer. For ex. someone w/a serious illness would die fairly quickly. Now they are helicoptered to a trauma center and 6 weeks and $1,000,000 later, they come out and live until 90 years old.