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Re:Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings ... by folkhack on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @03:07PM (#28620396)
> Like at a previous job I had at a 250 employee company where premiums went up $150/m one year because the previous year had two families had a kid get (very different kinds of) cancer out of the blue.

It's bad enough that I've heard office gossips complain about other employees leveraging their healthcare turning into higher premiums the year after. Like, as evil as complaining their coworker's kid got cancer.

When employees go through big health events it's hard to keep it under wraps in a work environment... especially in this "race to the bottom" society we happen to live in. You can bang on about privacy all you want, but people talk.

I guess I'm shocked it happened in an office of ~250 as I've always seen it happen at much smaller places.

Re:Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings ... by lotsofpulp on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @03:21PM (#28620584)
>It's bad enough that I've heard office gossips complain about other employees leveraging their healthcare turning into higher premiums the year after. Like, as evil as complaining their coworker's kid got cancer.

That is how it would have to work if the employer wants to restrict the risk pool to the company's employees. After all, money has to come from somewhere.

But employers are welcome to participate in healthcare.gov plans where the risk pool is much larger (across the whole state), and where individuals in the company cannot be solely blamed for increases in healthcare costs:

It's bad enough that I've heard office gossips complain about other employees leveraging their healthcare turning into higher premiums the year after. Like, as evil as complaining their coworker's kid got cancer.

Re:Hospitals lift curtain on prices, revealing giant swings ... by truffdog on Thursday September 23, 2021 @01:00AM (#28625342)
Sometimes it's worse than the office gossip- https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/02/tim-armstrong-blame...