I believe it. After the minimum wage was raised to $16 for servers here in the Twin Cities local businesses started adding a "convenience fee" of up to 21% to the restaurant bills in lieu of customers giving cash tips. This caused a lot of servers to have to divide up equal shares of those fees from the pool and declare everything they make to the IRS. Many of our friends in the industry said they were better off before. I don't believe this happens much outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul though.

$1.2k sounds about right for monthly premium for two. Ours is almost double that from the insurance marketplace. My wife will be eligible for Medicare in two years, I think, which will help out tremendously. She'll still need to carry some kind of supplemental policy but nothing close to what we're paying now.