>> I think they'd be shocked if they had to pay full retail price for it.

I don't think many techies will be shocked to pay ~$500/month. I wonder how much salary you pay to your people.

I suppose it depends a lot on how much you end up paying in taxes. In Norway you'd pay between ~35-45% income tax (and the employer pays a little more on top of that) - that amounts to ~2600-3600 USD out of a monthly 8000 USD paycheck (100.000 USD/year). For that you get (mostly) free medical care, pay during sick-leave, free education for yourself and your children through college. It's certainly more than 500/month - but 500/month doesn't sound like that much assuming it will cover all kinds of illnesses, including things like life-term cancer treatment with followup even if you lose your job.

Take downtown SF ($463). If you pay for your own health insurance starting at age 26 and stopping at 76, you will have paid:

$450 * 12 * 50 = $270,000

No wonder pharma companies in the US make a killing.

And at age 50, it is ~$750 p/m.

$462 a month for insurance shouldn't be a back breaking amount for the average tech worker.

Even if you consider a very low salary of $100,000 and consider that health insurance is completely pretax (federal, social security, and medicare), that's only $308 a month out of your check if you had to pay it all yourself.

My point is that tech workers by and large aren't paying for health insurance themselves, their companies are. So it's easy to forget and be outraged when something is free, but when you're self employed this is a huge burden and expense.

Also, $462 a month anywhere outside of California in the US is a decent amount of money. Hell, even in California that's a car payment for a luxury high end car.

When I'm contracting and have to take my own insurance into account, I estimate 1800 hours a year. $462 a month translates to $3.08 an hour. If I can't bill an extra $3.08 an hour over a full time gig, why would I contract? If I can't make more than $462 a month being self employed than I could make by being a corporate drone, why would I be self employed?

Playing devils advocate, your saying just make more money then? That doesn't seem very liberal and progressive.

I'm saying take that into account if you decide to be self employed. If you're not prepared to pay your own insurance when you decide to go out on your own, you're probably not expecting the extra 9% in self employment taxes....

I'm not a liberal or progressive - I'm a bleeding heart libertarian. For instance I don't believe in the minimum wage (libertarian) but I think the Earned Income Tax Credit should make up the difference and it should be a monthly credit so people can have a livable wage if they work (bleeding heart) and don't have a problem paying taxes if it helps people to help themselves.