Our health insurance premiums are up 12% this year. Last year they tried to raise

[bertman]

our company's premiums 42% but when we started shopping around they said they'd "made a Clerical Error; it is only an 18% increase".

That's 30% of rate hikes in two years.

Makes me wonder what the increase would have been if we weren't in the middle of the struggle over healthcare reform.

This is a group policy of medical insurance I'm referring to, in case that wasn't clear.

[msongs]

1. see? NOBODY is afraid of congressional democrats or Obama nt

[bertman]

2. That, or they're grabbing for all the money they can squeeze out of the insured before

any restrictions are placed on their operations. The philosophy being that you get the rates as high as you can before any regulation takes place and that way the benchmarks are high as hell to start with. Although none of the proposed regulations look like they're going to be much of a hardship for them at this point.