Roughly 3 years ago, the average person looking for an individual health insurance plan was self employed, thus unable to be covered by an employer. Times have changed though, and today’s individual insurance shopper has either become unemployed, or has an employer who can no longer afford to provide health insurance benefits. Many small companies find the astronomically high cost of insurance premiums too much to be able to offer health insurance benefits to their employees, and even bigger companies are having to pass on more of the burden to their employees who are covered. But it is the growing ranks of the recently unemployed who find COBRA too expensive which are currently the major percentage of those looking for an individual policy. How is this affecting the landscape of the individual insurance marketplace?