Before my live-in gf recently accepted a job at a preschool, she compared offers from two schools. We looked through the offers together, and she went with the one that sucked least. The offer indicated that her employer would pay $90 towards her health insurance, lo and behold she comes to find out after working there for 2 months that the premium is going to be upwards of $300 a month! She works full-time at $14 hr. and benefits don't even kick in until she's 3 months in, despite getting sick (along with me) from the little brats.
She had mentioned the idea of asking her employer to pay her their portion of the health benefit directly to her pay check. She currently pays for her college's health insurance policy, which isn't great but still better. Its never crossed my mind, especially since the full-time positions I've held have always had decent health plans, but why wouldn't an employer not pay directly in lieu of an employee declining health insurance?
My guess is that her employer doesn't really pay per employee the same amount by which the health care company actually bills them. Is there anything else I may be missing here?