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Comment by nawitus | Hacker News Reader

This is slightly offtopic, but (in the typical case) does the employer or the employee pay the health insurance? I guess this depends a lot on the workplace, but I wonder how this factors into the incomes reported by Americans. For example, if someone's income is $60k per year, the real income would be $52k with an expensive $700/month insurance.

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It just varies. Some employers don't provide insurance. Some provide a very small subsidy, some cover a lot more. Some will offer pre-tax witholding to pay for your policy but not contribute anything. It's one of those things you have to look at when you compare compensation packages.

I've worked at places where the salary probably sounded really great to an outsider but there were no benefits; this is not that uncommon in small tech companies from what I've seen. I've also worked where the salary was more in the middle or lower end of what you might expect but there were large contributions to insurance and retirement plans and generous amounts of paid time off.

Generally the employer pays for the cost of the HMO plan and then if you want a more expensive PPO plan, they take the difference from your paycheck pretax. The main difference between the 2 plans is that PPO allows you to see pretty much any doctor or specialist anytime, while HMO, you have an assigned doctor and need a referral from that doctor to see anyone else.

It's rare for the employer to pay the full cost of coverage for an expensive healthcare plan, and some people get a much better deal on group rates than others. However, there are tax advantages to employer heath coverage. So real world examples are often fairly complex, but generally your better off which employer heath coverage even if your paying for 1/2 of it.

We just went through this with SimplyInsured. Basically employer determines how much they're willing to cover from a service. The employee has the option to take that package or choose another package and pay the difference. In rare case they may choose a cheaper package. They won't get a rebate, but it can help reduce monthly costs for dependents.

Usually Employer pays for larger portion of the health insurance coverage and employee covers the rest. In Employees case, the insurance premiums come from pre-tax income

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