Summary: As another sign of Microsoft's demise comes the claim that health insurance/benefits are being removed by Microsoft, which still struggles to adapt to change

Microsoft "is cutting back more benefits to employees, cutting expenses... tightening the belt," said a reader of ours this morning, showing the news from Murdoch's press in a couple of sources.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world's largest software company, said on Friday it will trim its generous healthcare benefits for employees starting in 2013 because of rising coverage costs.

Also:

One of the perks of working at Microsoft: Health care costs that were 100% covered by the employer. Until now.

Microsoft announced to its employees Friday their "gold-plated" health care coverage would end in 2013, at which point the company would require employees to begin contributing to their own health care plans.

We will be seeing more of that in months to come based on some of the posts which will be published later in the weekend. Microsoft has already tried several rounds layoffs and word on the street is that more layoffs are coming shortly [1, 2, 3, 4]. Sometimes they just fire in the West and hire in Asia where it is a lot cheaper.

"Yes," said our reader (informal, IRC), "in India they (MS) probably do not have any benefits, or they are lots cheaper there if they do. [..] Times are tough at MS, even Ballmer only made half his bonus for 'good' work. The worker bee's are going have to do without so many health benefits.

"What's next for MS Employees? Layoffs, and wage cuts? Most likely. If Kinect and WP7, either or both are flops, it could be worse for them. Especially for Ballmer, they can toss him. Chrome OS coming out is the wild card. Even the smaller iPads can hurt MS. The competition could cause more problem for MS and Ballmer than even the flops will." ⬆