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Old 06-20-2011, 12:10 PM  
kane
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: portland, OR
Posts: 20,684
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard View Post
How in the world does someone's health insurance cost 1/4 of what they make? Unless they are making peanuts....

Health insurance for a family of three costs me $320 a month.
This was a lot of years ago, but I am sure there are still people in this situation at companies like this. I worked for a company where most of the people made around $7-$8 per hour. At this time it was the early 1990's and minimum wage was around $4.00 per hour. So the average person at this company made $280-$320 per week before taxes.

For a while your personal health insurance was free and it cost $30 per dependent per check for you to add your kids/spouse. The company got sold and the new company changed they rules. They took $25 per check (we got paid twice per month) for your personal health insurance. It was $80 per check per dependent beyond that. There was a single mom that I worked with that had three kids and a deadbeat ex. So she had to pay $50 per month for herself then an additional $480 per month for her kids. Total of around $530 a month for health insurance coverage and she made about $8 per hour so about 40% of her wages went to health insurance. needless to say she couldn't afford it and found another job asap.

I have a feeling stuff like this is a lot more common than you think.
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