[taylonr]

"The details and evolution of healthcare costs in particular were eye-opening"

How long have you been working? I ask out of curiosity, because I've been working for the past 12 years as a software developer. For the last 8 years if I didn't change jobs or get a promotion there was only 1 time that my raise out-paced the insurance increases.

The fact that the lowest paid guy got paid via pre-paid debit card is only surprising because I assumed it was cash under the table. I know that in central Missouri that if you work construction it's common practice to pay you in cash for the first 2 weeks because too many people don't stay on for two weeks. As a result employers see it as too expensive to fill out all the paperwork etc.

I guess I just thought most (if not all) of this was common knowledge, and I'm in a upper-middle bracket and come from an upper-middle class family, so it's not like I "came up from welfare" and saw all this first hand.

However, I assume that the stories of these family run a lot deeper. I just kept thinking "Is it really news that a dishwasher gets taken advantage of and lives in a scary neighborhood?"

[Tobu]

I live in Europe. I was aware of some aspects of US healthcare: expensive overall, a tendency to bankrupt people, failing to prevent easily avoidable harm, it's just that the first item was a statistic to me. 21% of income for someone who has a median income drove it home. The trend also escaped me, I didn't follow the US social climate until recently.

I assumed cash as well, especially since the employer is shady; our cards also have chips and would easily be tied to an ID, so I was a bit thrown off. We do share the problem of catering relying on undocumented labour.

[taylonr]

Sorry, my clearly US centric bias was showing. I didn't even think about someone who actually has decent insurance replying on this thread :)

I've been fortunate enough to get promoted & change jobs over the past 5 years so I've actually out-paced insurance costs. We'll just see if that continues.