As a point of reference, how much does private health insurance cost per month if you're trying to get it on your own?

My mom was paying $1500 a month at one point. I think when I was looking it was more in the $500 a month range.

My conservative twin sister always takes the anecdotal argument using a friend of ours as an example. He has had pancreatic cancer for about seven years now. He's had top-notch care, including trips to the Mayo clinic. He's retired but is still on his company's sponsored health care insurance. My sister argues that he would not have survived this long in Canada, France or England because of their socialized health care systems.

I argue that, gee, it's nice for this ONE GUY to have the luck to have such a generous, employer paid (and government subsidized) insurance plan but what happens when his retirement health benefits run out? What if he hits his lifetime cap for coverage? He's not going to be able to get private insurance because he's got cancer. Oh, that's right, he'll shift to Medicaid! In the mean time, hundreds of thousands of children in this country end up in ER for their primary healthcare and have never seen a dentist, even though their parents work hard and pay taxes.

There may be exceptions, but for the most part, bosses expect to be able to get in touch with you whenever.

I would certainly hope if that actually were the case, they would pay for the phone.

Of course, my Big Boss doesn't even have a cell phone, so I'm pretty sure that will never become a requirement.

As a point of reference, how much does private health insurance cost per month if you're trying to get it on your own?

Depends.

Then the company needs to pay for the phone.

The company should pay for the phone. Mostly, from what I have seen though, boss gets frustrated-> work environment suffers -> when cuts have to be made, person who boss can't reach at a moment's notice is the first to go.

StuntHusband - Is Freelancers Union available where you are? I admittedly am suggesting somethign I know little about. I just know that they offer health coverage options to freelancers.

bosses expect to be able to get in touch with you whenever.

Luckily they only hold the management-level employees to this at my company. And they pay for their phones.

Mostly, from what I have seen though, boss gets frustrated-> work environment suffers -> when cuts have to be made, person who boss can't reach at a moment's notice is the first to go.

Yup.

Even worse if you're freelance and can't get reached immediately. They'll simply call the next person on the list and you're SOL.

I've gotten so spoiled by texting. My cousin was here for the weekend, from Toronto, and has no texting plan. And we were constantly having to do BART pick-ups, etc, which required calling for any updates/changes that could have been handled with one word via text. I can't believe how quickly I've gotten used to texting and how much more I loathe making calls.

I haven't yet had a boss who expected me to be able to deal with work stuff whenever. At least not regularly -- I think my current boss has reached out to me twice outside of working hours/days, and she's the first one to really do that. I guess I've been lucky.

Current company pays for my BlackBerry. Previous company did not pay for my cell, but also did not use it often (but did require to have the number for work purposes). I would not work well in an environment that required 24/7 access and actually acted on that. It would take a lot of benefits to have me on call like that.

My mom would have died long ago if she hadn't had fantastic retirement health coverage combined with her Medicare. She made the choice for palliative care and received fantastic treatment. It was HER choice, before hearing all the options from the doc.

I think I'm gonna step away for a while.