Another point that was just posted that relates to my points here. The casinos can choose to stop paying all or part of the insurance and give pay increases in return. If the increase is used by the employee to buy or pay part of their insurance, than the burden of insurance cost increases will largely or partly fall on the employee. This would allow the casinos to fix or minimize their burden of increasing insurance costs for the time of the contract. If the cost of insurance increases during the time of the contract, they do not have to deal with that uncertainty. That is if I understand the issue right. I recall with one of my previous employers that they had several problems in a short period of time, less than a year, where they had to reassess the insurance coverage due to increases in costs. I understand that these issues still occour frequently. The effect of them is that they cause, as mentioned, sometimes frequent, "ACCROSS THE BOARD PAY INCREASES" since all these benefits are, in fact, part of the compensation that the employer pays to it's employee. Sometimes I get the impression that people forget this. They think these benefits are FREEBIES. They are not. They are all included as parts of a compensation package.