My wife got a job at a school and we were looking at the medical insurance stuff.

They offer two HMO's that would only cost us $10-$15 every paycheck (biweekly pay) a PPN which would cost us about $40 every paycheck and a traditional medical insurance plan which would cost us about $490 every paycheck.

My questions are:

What is a PPN?
What is the difference between a PPN and a HMO?
And why would anyone pay $490/paycheck (almost $1,000/4weeks) for medical insurance? Is that normal?

All those plans are after what is covered by the school. The traditional plan is listed as over $2k/month so our portion is just less than half but why the fuck is it so much?

I really know nothing about medical insurance...educate me.