I doubt that, E. Maybe people in really small groups or who have to buy insurance individually. But friends who work for large corporations--the size of AMR--don't pay anything like this much. Unless, of course, they have the same level of thievery among their executives that we have.
And, for the most part these are people who have been long time employees of AA reservations who have been forced to choose home-based work as an alternative to losing their jobs completely. The company is changing their benefits in mid-stream in the middle of the year. It's just inexcusable. Another, "we had our fingers crossed behind our backs" move by the company.