health insurance and employer

[Goldy1]

I could recount several examples of the employer being disrespectful (and I am saying this knowing business is business etc. I get it;doggy do world right but they have been downright stinky to people)The employer has even had actual legal issues in recent past by not being fair with thier practices. I won't recount details, and they had ZERO to do with my husband or his department even, but the employer in head office.
But what do you do? Walk away from a $20 an hour job to go work at a grocery store bagging groceries etc? I've had the expereince of getting jobs based on "learning on the job" instead of using my degree. You get low pay, and not much appreciation bc you can be easily replaced by someone on the street due to lower skilled job.
He sometimes has phone calls for intervviews for CONTRACT jobs. We have a family and need insurance, and don't want a contract length job. I mean, it's surprising how common these are. I get it, but we can't have him leave for a 6 month stint somewhere with no benefits.

I'm not asking any questions, but I guess it just shows how tough it can be out there ya know.

[phantom]

But what do you do? Walk away from a $20 an hour job to go work at a grocery store bagging groceries etc? I've had the expereince of getting jobs based on "learning on the job" instead of using my degree. You get low pay, and not much appreciation bc you can be easily replaced by someone on the street due to lower skilled job.
He sometimes has phone calls for intervviews for CONTRACT jobs. We have a family and need insurance, and don't want a contract length job. I mean, it's surprising how common these are. I get it, but we can't have him leave for a 6 month stint somewhere with no benefits.

I'm not asking any questions, but I guess it just shows how tough it can be out there ya know.

I know you say you're not asking questions, but I'm going to answer the "what do you do?" one anyway.

I would not walk away from a $20/hour job for a lower-paying, unskilled position. Instead I would keep looking till I found a permanent position at a better place. I would also consider contract-to-hire positions, even if it meant paying for my own health insurance for a period of time, but only if they were offering enough of a pay increase for me to be able to afford health insurance on my own. In general, I'd take a slight pay cut if I could manage it, so long as I could clearly see a path to a better situation in the long run.

My husband and I both work in an industry where contract jobs are a lot easier to come by than permanent positions. My previous employer went through an extended rough period during which they cut everyone's pay, continuously lied about how they were almost ready to turn the corner, and did other things that I didn't like. It took 8 months from the time I decided I'd had enough till the time I found a job that looked significantly better than the one I had. I passed over several contracts, and I told one employer I wasn't interested when they tried to low ball me after the first interview. But, I'm really glad I looked and equally glad that I held out till I found what I was looking for. I just had to keep telling myself that I was valuable and that I just had to find a good place to recognize my value.

Meanwhile, my husband went through a string of jobs after being laid off. Since he didn't have a job, he was less picky about what sort of jobs he would take. He took several contracts and one job with an annoyingly long commute. But, all the while, he was at least building up his skill set by stretching himself in slightly different directions. The contract jumping path is not one I'd recommend to a guy who still has a job and a wife and kid to support though. It took him almost 2 years to find a good permanent position again, but he did manage it eventually.

Anyway, I know good jobs can be tough to find. I don't know enough about what your husband does to say with certainty that he's underpaid for his experience level and that there are other employers out there who would treat him better. But, I strongly suspect that that's the case. So, I definitely encourage you to encourage him to go see what's out there.

[Goldy1]

He has about 18 years expereince in cad/cam

[Gailete]

Goldy, I realize that this thread started awhile ago, but here is the scoop for us. I'm on Medicare due to chronic health problems and disability. Just so you know, Medicare is not free if you need the kind of coverage I need. I pay around $350 a month just to pay for my suplemental policies, plus I have to pay for copayments on my drugs which runs over $100 a month. My self-employed hubby has NO insurance. He has multiple health problems so any insurance would cost way more than we could ever afford. He had to be hospitalized about 2 months ago for several days. Our bills from that couple days is around $20,000. We applied for Medicaid (welfare) for the bill. He was denied because they looked at our self-employment 'income' as the money we took in, no expenses deducted. They said his monthly income was over $2000 a month plus, jeepers he has an IRA with about $6000 in it (he is 47 he should have something set aside!!!). That kept him over assets accoring to them. So then the hospital sent us paperwork to fill out to see if we were eligible for a discounted bill. I just sent that in but I'm sure they are going to think we have too much, but in the midst of doing the calculating our income, I noted that his average monthly income is less than $900 a month this year(remember he has health problems and so do I). We put out over $8000 a year in medical expenses. So no, lots of folks don't manage to get welfare. I think you have to be willing to sit on your backside and be willing to survive on what they will give you to get welfare.

Now we are facng this new 'health care plan'. If we don't qualify for free insurance for my husband, which since it will be government rules that run the calculations on how much a person has to pay, they will probably say yet again we are over assets. If we don't buy insurance in 2014 we will have to pay a fine/tax whatever it will be called. If we could afford insurance now we would have it and so because we don't we will be fined or forced to pay for something we can't afford! . So for us the question will be do we eat or have an insurance policy? We are a family in the cracks and currently there is no hope for us even with the new rules coming in. We do the best we can, but when you have health problems you are limited in what you can do.

[mgkimsal]

I'm currently a stay at home mom to one child. My husband works full time. He's been there about 11 years(he was laid off once for a year and this was 2 years ago but they called him back)
There are roughly 200 employees of different ranks. We pay roughly $200 or so a week for our health insurance. Employer pays the rest. This is for 3 people. Its decent insurance with about a 2k deductable which is fine with me.

They sent out a letter a couple months ago saying that any new employees they hire have new rules for health insurance. The letter stated that the employer will only pay for the employee and any dependents will not be covered unless the employee pays the full difference.
Employees already employed will not be subject to this.(as of yet anyway)
I think it's crappy. It means a new guy coming in with a wife and kid will get insurance paid for himself(of course he'll pay a percentage for it for himself) but if he wants to insure wife and kids he has to pay the full difference. I know when dh got laid off cobra was very pricey so we opted out.
The employer has not been known to do layoffs regularly but when my husband was laid off before and called back ,he came in as new employee and had to wait 4 months for insurance and lost vacation days etc.

The message to me from them is:we don't want to pay your healthcare(I know it's gotta be hard for them being so pricey, I get it) and I wonder if next year they take it away. It's an auto supplier non union and my dh is an engineer type.

Realizing this started a while back, I'll still chime in.

You haven't said how healthy or not you all are - I'm assuming medium healthy. You should look at getting an individual family policy with a higher deductible. It *might* end up being still $800/month, but I'm looking at some rates on the BCBS Michigan site, and for a $5000-$7000 deductible policy, by my reckoning, you could probably get something for 3 of you for ~$500-$600/month. Then it's *yours*. Laid off? You still have it? Get a new job? You don't have to wait X days or months to 'get on' their insurance - you just have it. You could be saving $200/month, and have more control over your insurance, which both seem like wins to me.

For comparison, for 2 of us in NC in our 40s (no kids), we have a high-deductible of $5500 and premiums of $280/month. We're not in perfect health either - both of us have been 'rated' in to a higher price range.

The biggest push back I get from people when I recommend this is "but I don't have $5000 in case there's an emergency!". I sometimes hear this from people who have no problem financing a $20k car, but keep paying $1000/month for company insurance just in case they have a $3k insurance bill. We *had* a $3k bill last year - emergency room visit in January. We didn't *get a bill* until April. I didn't know how much it would be, but I had 3 months before I even got the news, so we just saved up during those months knowing it would be *something*. On top of that, we bill came with "do you need to make payments?" instructions. I don't advocate financing medical coverage, but I'd rather someone consider taking that risk to be saving thousands per year with their own insurance vs feeling trapped in jobs just for the sake of insurance.

[Goldy1]

so do I understand it correctly that we can't get "obabacare" or whatever you want to call it if we have any assets? I thought that situation meant welfare/medicaid anyway and obamare was like Canada where you get healthcare(I know we would pay some of it).