Number 351 On the Vast and Expanding List of $#17 I Just Don't Get

So with my pay packet yesterday arrives a note. I paraphrase below, including all assumptions in italics:

Dear Flunky:
As you no doubt know, because you are privy to the finest details of the workings of Company Holdings Holding Company (Holdings) LLC your supplemental insurance package came up for renewal.

We successfully employed a monkey to negotiate on our behalf and as a result Your premiums have gone up by 33.3% percent.

Retroactive to last month. Therefore $100 will be reamed out of you and deducted from your cheque and flung to the floor of Great Big Life Insurance Corp, the executives of which will roll about in it with their secretaries.

Thank you for your committment to holding still and continuing to accept this sort of screwing-over and increasing the profits of both Company Holdings Holding Company (Holdings) LLC and Great Big Insurance, as well as ignoring this particular gouging and giving your work your fullest attention.

If you have any questions please feel free to £µ©λ off and die. Under no circumstances are you to contact Cheeky Brassneck, Human Resources and general exploitation.

Have a nice day.


Like many Canadian workplaces, my company "offers" a supplemental insurance package for all workers. What I totally fail to understand is:

1) As an idividual, I can get supplemental insurance for about $60 per month. Why was my company charging me twice that much?

2) Okay, so they're theoretically insuring a grab-bag of miscellaneous risk. Why then could my previous employer, who ran a heavy, sweaty, labour-intensive, slippery, dangerous shop that averaged a time-lost back injury about every three weeks minimum, provide me with better coverage for $60 per month?

While simultaneously paying my medical services payment (about $75 per month), yet! Which Holdings Corp doesn't.

3) Why is this gouging mandatory for all employees? Even those who are covered by other plans (as I am) must fork over a minimum to cover long-term disability. I don't actually begrudge the company that, but why is it mandatory?

And if $27 covers the LTD, what the hell is the other $40 covering? My life insurance payout on this plan is roughly 2/3 of my annual salary. I got that from the army for $10 a month!
Something stinks here.

Finally, 4) A 33% raise in rates? WTF? WHY? Is there one really sick bastard out there screwing up the curve? (And if so, will they drop the rates when he retires? Don't make me laugh--there's a longish wait time for a busted gut repair).

However, Mme Metro is having some fairly expensive expenses at the moment. Until they either fork over or deny the claim based on whatever reasonable grounds they can dream up (sunspots, the fall of Rome, the fact that they still don't yet have all our money ...), I'll smile while the fox gnaws.

I tell you, as soon as corporate interests get involved in health care in any capacity, someone's getting £µ©λed blind.

The way it seems to me, this adverserial relationship sets up a system under which, to get one's money's worth, one has to claim every possible penny from a system designed to stymie you at every step.

I would far rather put that $160 a month into my pension fund, or into the provicial health service ... or lottery tickets.