This is America. Sure you have benefits, you think, if you have a job, but a huge number of the outcomes where you need those benefits result in you losing your

This is America. Sure you have benefits, you think, if you have a job, but a huge number of the outcomes where you need those benefits result in you losing your job and no longer having them. And if you get too expensive and start showing up on the company's benefits cost, they are strongly incented to find alternative means for removing you from the payroll. Really, work-provided benefits mainly serve the purpose of preventing people from voting for universal benefits. Of course the percentage of people dealing with the cases where you really need (and they don't want to pay) those benefits is very small, so the number of people that fully understand the situation is very small. Benefits exist for the benefit of the company: to retain people, keep them bound/disincent them leaving, and to appear "competitive" with other companies. Whether they ACTUALLY will hold up is a gamble, and often up to munificience of your "benefactor". To emphasize, when you MOST need benefits, you are LEAST valuable to the company providing those benefits.