Report: Insurance Costs For U.S. Workers Have Surged This Year
Editor’s Note -
‘Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.‘
The above claim was a major selling point by Barack Obama in duping American’s to support ObamaCare. It can still be found on the web site he created for the non-existent ‘Office of the President-Elect’ – http://change.gov/agenda/health_care_agenda/
This is example 1,264 that ObamaCare will actually increase costs, reduce the quality and availability of care and wreak havoc on the medical industry. And 37% in this country still support it. Which is a strong indication that 37% of Americans have absolutely no idea what is in this legislation and are supporting it stricly from an ideology standpoint. Very dangerous…
Report: Insurance Costs For U.S. Workers Have Surged This Year
By Mike Lillis
The HillHealth insurance costs for the nation’s workers skyrocketed this year, even as the quality of many plans deteriorated, according to an independent report released Thursday.
The average worker is now paying roughly $4,000 toward employer-sponsored family healthcare coverage — a jump of $482 (14 percent) above last year’s figure, according to the report. By contrast, overall premium costs rose just 3 percent above 2009 levels, researchers found, and employer contributions toward family coverage did not rise at all.
The findings — stemming from an annual survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) — are an indication that businesses have responded to the recession by shifting more and more costs to their employees.
Drew Altman, KFF’s president and CEO, told reporters that cost sharing is an important part of employer-based healthcare coverage, but excessive cost sharing will eventually lead to hardships for workers that could threaten their access to care.
Among the other findings:
• Thirty-eight percent of large firms trimmed benefits or increased cost-sharing in 2010 — up from 22 percent in 2009 — while 36 percent of small firms reported scaling back benefits or shifting more costs to workers, up from 22 percent last year.
• Many employers are hiking annual deductibles on workers, with 27 percent of covered workers now in plans with deductibles higher than $1,000 — up from 22 percent in 2009. Among small companies (with 3-199 workers), 46 percent of workers have deductibles at least that high.
• The average worker is now assuming 30 percent of the premium cost for family plans — up from 27 percent last year — and 19 percent of single-coverage premiums, a hike of 2 percent above 2009 levels. Those figures mark the first statistically significant increase in both categories since the researchers launched their annual survey 12 years ago.
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