RISING HEALTH CARE prices HAVE HIT...

RISING HEALTH CARE prices HAVE HIT builders hard. At best, builders face average annual premium increases of at least 15 percent The starker reality is that builders are trading opposite to pay raises for health insurance benefits or, worse, ne to intersect out benefits altogether.

"General medical insurance is to a high degree expensive, our costs went up 18 percent this past year," says Kristin Farese, office manager at R.A. Franchi Corp. in Newton, Mass., which provides nine employee 100 percent coverage forward HMO Blue from Blue Cros in the blues Shield of Massachusetts.

"We have musing about having the employees pay a share, unless ...