Health News
"Employers will likely face health-care cost increases of 8.5 percent in 2012, but they'll mitigate that burden by pushing more costs onto employees and making other changes to benefits," reports The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Hobson.
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Health News
Employers will have to pay 8 percent more for employee health insurance next year
"Employers will likely face health-care cost increases of 8.5 percent in 2012, but they'll mitigate that burden by pushing more costs onto employees and making other changes to benefits," reports The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Hobson. All told, employers will pay 7 percent more in health-care costs next year, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report has concluded. The report surveyed 1,700 employers, as well as hospital executives and health-plan actuaries.
Provider consolidation, cost shifting from Medicare and Medicaid by providers, and stress related to the bad economy are all causing costs to rise. "Several health plans interviewed indicated they were seeing more claims for stress-induced illnesses," the report states. "Specifically, as stress levels increase, health becomes less of a priority and people are less likely to maintain a healthy lifestyle."
Cost sharing and a large number of drugs that will go off patent next year are helping to keep costs down somewhat, however.
But employee health plans are getting less attractive, with employees being asked to pay higher deductibles. "We're projecting by 2012, most (covered) employees will have a deductible of $500 or more in-network and $1,000 or more out-of-network," said Michael Thompson, principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers' human resources practice. (Read more)
- Study Finds That Obese Workers Cost Employers Thousands In Extra Medical Costs Every Year; Kentucky Ranks Ninth In Obesity
A morbidly obese employee costs his or her employer approximately $4,000 more in health care and related costs every year than an employee of normal weight, according to a study in the American Journal of Health Promotion. Kentucky ranks ninth...
- Workers, Employers Blame Obamacare For Higher Premiums, But Experts Say The Causes Are A Lot More Complicated Than That
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News While the main provisions of the federal health-reform law are only now taking effect, some Americans are already saying it doesn't work and are blaming it for higher insurance premiums and deductibles. But the...
- Survey Finds Employees Pay Greater Share Of Health Costs, And Most Large Employers Penalize Them For Using Tobacco
As large employers respond to changes influenced by health care reform and rising costs of care, employees are paying a greater portion of their health-care costs. That trend that is likely to continue over the next few years, says a new report on employer-based...
- Here Are The Seven Factors Driving Health Care Cost Increases
Escalating health care costs are everybody's problem and no one entity's fault. Julie Appleby at Kaiser Health News reports that the United States spends about18 percent of its gross domestic product -- or about $2.6 trillion a year -- on health...
- Employers: Dropping Group Health Insurance Could Cost You
Looking ahead to 2015, many employers are deciding how to respond to the rising cost of employee group health insurance premiums. A study of employers by the large consulting group Mercer suggests that ?the per-employee health benefit cost will rise by...