Everyone understands it's insane, but the people with the power to change it have fantastic employer-provided health care, so why would they change things?

In all seriousness, if tax laws were changed to eliminate the employer advantage, things would change. But until then...

I just got my tax information for the year. My insurance is pretty good. I pay around $100 a month for family coverage, my company pays $21000 a year to subsidize it.

But, I still think it’s insane. We’ve made all sorts of decisions because of employee provided health insurance.

My now-wife met at work. We knew that our company was on its last legs, she took a job right before she was laid off making less money just to make sure that she had insurance for her and her sons (we weren’t married at the time).

I was laid off when the company was sold but I got a contract with one of our clients. I first looked for insurance on the open market. No one would sell me insurance because of a pre-existing condition. My “condition” wasn’t anything like cancer and I was part time fitness instructor, and ran half marathons within the last year.

Sure I could get CORBA, which I did, but less than four months later the acquiring company cancelled their insurance plan and outsourced all development to India.

I proposed to my wife and we were planning to get married in six months. She thought it was crazy I was helping to support her (she took a lower paying job) and paying insurance. She said let’s go to the courthouse and get married so I can get on her insurance.

She now works part time for the school system mostly so we can have insurance while I jump back and forth between salaried jobs and contract jobs.