yep going to be layed off too. found out to continue your group health insurance is going to cost 570.00 a month or what my employer was paying ,heard itwent up 10% this year.it also a reason business has a hard time paying us....this is where bush should startfinding solution,etc. if you dig deep l would not be surprise to find corruption too , agree?

$570 really is not too bad for COBRA, if u had halfway decent coverage through ur employer. If l were to leave my employer, COBRA would cost about $850 a month.

If ur employer was having a hard time paying the premiums, they should have investigated other cost saving measures. l am sure that ur co-workers would have rather compromised on their health plan vs. being out of a job entirely in this economy. There r things that an employer can work with on their insurance policy to help control premiums.wellness programs, increasing deductibles or coinsurance, etc. (Not that employees would be thrilled about a deductible increase, but it still beats losing a job.)

As far as ''corruption'' goes.insurance premiums go up to compensate for medical expenses going up. If an insurer raised premiums by 10% in a year, then u should be able to confirm (through publicly available data with the department of insurance) that the volume of medical claims they were paying out increased also. The insurance industry is one of the most tightly regulated industries there is - nearly every move an insurance company makes has to be approved through the department of insurance, & all of the data is available for the public to review. Unfortunately, medical expenditures grow every year, & those costs have to be absorbed somewhere.

no.not at all..considering what the rest of the world is paying. Sweden has a 25% sales tax (equivilent of), income tax, and each employer pays 32% of salary as a tax. (Denmark and Norway as well -- and l mention them because these are the countries 'they' always bring up)

So imagine paying 25% more for everything you buy on 30% less income (because that is where that tax would come from).

Is that clear enough?