...employer may have access...? ... to my family's health history and knowledge of medical expenses? Normally, individuals' information is not shared by the insurance carrier with the employer, but when the carrier IS the employer... well you get the idea. I'd figure it would be a trivial exercise to figure out which employees are costing such a company the most and to... deal with said situation accordingly. Not that anybody in my family is planning on getting sick of course, but I wouldn't want a future hospital stay to be the cause of my dismissal.

Challenge: I'm sure there are laws in place to protect employees of health insurance providers, but what actually happens in practice?