One Percent, Day Twenty: These sexy volleyball players have a point to make about insurance premiums and your job.

What's this about? Click here for an explanation.

Health care reform doesn't just affect the uninsured. Recently, I had to consider whether or not to hire someone at our firm, and after considering how much to pay that person, I had to consider the hidden costs-- the money employers pay for an employee, not to an employee.

Here's one such number: Health insurance premiums. 61% of Americans get their insurance through an employer... right now. I say right now because in 2010, 80% of employers plan to increase employee contributions to health plans in 2010, and 18% plan to eliminate generous health care plans. (Source.)

That's happening because in the last ten years, premiums for employer-provided health insurance have risen 120%. (Source.)

If you get your insurance through your employer, how much longer will they be able to bear that cost? One day, you may come in and find out that your boss is shifting some or all of the costs of that insurance to you? And what will you do then?

Until we get single-payer health care, the current health reform package that'll be voted on tomorrow is the best thing to do, and here's why: Every big job starts somewhere. Almost everyone in the universe looks at a large task and thinks I'll never get that done... and that can lead to stasis, to an inability to get going, period.

I'm not in favor of incremental change, except when incremental change is the only way to get change going, and if that incremental change is a step in the right direction, then I support the small step if the big step won't be taken.

This health reform package is a good thing, as I've pointed out on various days throughout (and will continue to do until it's passed.) It's not the best thing but it's a good step. It's a big job getting started, and a job that's long overdue.

Since 1911 people have been trying to get a law passed that will provide health insurance coverage for all Americans. Ninety-nine years later, we're still trying.

The bill should pass, because it will take us closer to that goal than we have yet come, and because it will show people that health care and insurance can be reformed.

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When I'm not blogging, I'm writing -- legal briefs and novels, as you know. Which means I run through a lot of ink -- a LOT of ink. I save money by getting my HP Ink Cartridges through PrintCountry.com -- so that I don't spend more than I have to, and I never run out of ink... or ideas for stories. Like this one I just got, about a guy who orders some printer ink through an online service, but when it comes, in the package are not just inks, but DIAMONDS, and a weird note written in some kind of code...