Yes It is outrageous indeed!  It IS a conspiracy to separate as much of our hard earned money from us as possible.  People are clueless, even the people in HR that bring these plans to fruition.

 To be clear, I was not defending such actions.  It just seemed like the story meshed all kinds of risks (market risk, high trading costs, etc..) into "hidden 401k fees" to make the story sound that much more astonishing.  It was misleading.  As we know low costs are important and a seemingly small expense difference of just 1% adds up bigtime over say 30 years.  However, the story almost made it sound like this is wiping people out and that they are opening there statements and are down 50% because of hidden 401k fees.  I mean c'mon, there was certainly an agenda and bias to this story.  Sometimes thats what it takes to draw attention, but just calling it how I see it. 

I think I will evaluate my wifes 401k financials to see how bad we are getting ripped!

It seems pretty simple right using the Summary Annual Report......is this correct?

[(Plan expenses + benefits paid)/dollar amount of plan]*100 = Total Plan ER

Brian