BountyHunter: The solution is to not get insurance through your employer..
Are you saying it is more economical for a single individual to go to Kaiser or Blue Cross and buy insurance as compared to a county with 50,000 employess who can force a much lower cost?
I know something of what medical plans cost, and your equation is upside down. BTW: if you want to know why 150 million Americans have no health coverage, it's because their employers don't offer any and they can not afford to pay $600 per month out of pocket.
Employers will not try to screw people when they are in simple fair contracts, laws mess things up. If someone is only paid X dollars an hour they will get that, it is so easy that there is no way to cheat them. .
Or if they are paid 25 cents per soccer ball sewn, that makes it even simpler.
Your cart is again trying to pull the horse. This government was founded on laissez faire to business (no governmental control) and that brought us the benefits of the 100 hour work week and six year olds working on assembly lines. The protection laws were spawned from outrage over acts so egregious that people could not stand it any more, not from some misguided notion that the government should be in the management business.
Do you think this is only a problem from long ago?
Right now a law suit is being driven against IBM for what they did at their Cottle Road plant back in the 1980's. Two things: workers were exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals during their routine work and IBM also discharged much of the toxic chemicals into the ground water. Why? They knew if they got caught, the fines would be 100X less than the cost of safe disposal. That's a carry over lagacy from when (then ) Governor Reagan gutted the teeth from Cal-OSHA and took away any enforcement bite.
IBM is refusing to settle the suit even though it is clear cut: a brain cancer so rare it shows up about one in ten million: about eight people from that work area died from it. Massive and gruesome birth dfects, liver cancer, skin cancers, it's like a chamber of horrors for a medical journal.
The bottom line is: companies need a conscience enforced on them sometimes and the government is the only one big enough to do it. Minimum wage, safe working conditions, and fair treatment are all in that boat.