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Mercer
Your healthcare costs are going up, but so are your employers'.
Employers shelled out $9,562 per employee, on average, for healthcare benefits this year, a 6.9 percent increase over last year, according to a survey of employers released Wednesday.
That's up from a 5.5 percent increase in 2009 and the largest percentage increase since 2004, according to consulting firm Mercer, which compiled the annual survey.
The Mercer survey, which this year included 2,836 employers with 10 or more employees, reported that costs rose most for companies with 500 employees or more. For those employers, costs went up by 8.5 percent, versus 4.4 percent for smaller employers.
Big companies are more likely to be self-insured, meaning they pay out of pocket for their employees’ health expenses.
Beth Umland, Mercer’s director of health and benefits research, said the bigger increase for those large employers is partly because healthcare treatment costs rose during the year. She said employees also may have sought out more healthcare treatments in 2010 after putting them off in 2008 and 2009 because of the recession.
Of course, employees also are feeling the pinch of rising healthcare costs. Mercer reports that the average deductible for PPO plans rose by more than $100 in 2010, to a whopping $1,200. PPO plans now make up around 70 percent of all employee benefit plans, according to Mercer.
Employers are finding other ways to cut their healthcare costs. Mercer said more employers are adding high-deductible options such as consumer-directed healthcare plans, and fewer companies are offering medical plans for early retirees.
A separate study, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation in September, found that workers are paying almost $4,000 on average for healthcare coverage this year, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
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Well, insurance companies have gotta make their profits. They have shareholders to be accountable to. What are they supposed to do--spend more money on patient care ?!?!?
Health insurance is a business. If you want a system that's all about the patients, move to France.
But the CEOs and board of directors don't share the profits with the shareholder. Unless you consider 1.43% a good yield (United Health care). Fact is the CEOs and their reports along with the board of directors are sucking up the money and the common shareholder can't do a damn thing about it. Why people defend these thieves is beyond me.
Make health insurance companies not for profit. Unfortunately, with the lobbyists from them, it will never happen.
If the government forced them to, we wouldn't see insurance costs rising at 10% every year.
All forms of healthcare should be non-profit....pay the doctors, nurses, and staff...the rest should be for the greater good of the populous.
We definitely need another healthcare bill.
OK,...you don't like the one we had. What now, GOP ?
Or,...is it preferrable to you to keep it like it is ? Gee,...I wonder.
I'm with you.
Obama angered his so called "base" by working closely with insurers and healthcare providers.
SO let's see the GOP do better.
Why don't they just cut to the chase and send all our paychecks directly to their overseas masters.
Hope and Che, baby!
Instead of addressing the rising cost of medical insurance, medical care, and prescriptions Mr. Obama instead passes a health care plan that does NOTHING to help control these costs. Then FORCES everyone to carry insurance. One term and out for this one.
Exactly. I smirk every time I hear the law called the "Affordable Care Act." It does nothing to control health care costs, and the new requirements on what health insurers must offer, plus eliminating pre-existing conditions exclusions that were already limited by state laws, will drive health insurance premiums even higher.
My healthcare went down $10/pay period this year ($260) - directly due to the legislation.
HearMyTruth, I will totally agree that the mandate for all to carry health insurance be removed as soon as you agree that hospitals can bar their doors and refuse admittance to anyone who cannot pay - let them die in the streets or cough up the $$$$.
I am all for it. Why should a hospital have to privide free services when a grocery store does not have to provide free food to the hungry? Healthcare should be paid for like any other service. If you can pay for it you get it if you can't you don't. The government can set up medical loans that are based on need and the ability for the recipient to pay it back but spreading the crushing cost of health care in Americal across the entire population will just crush the entire population.
Obviously, costs cannot continue their upward spiral contrary to inflation indefinitely. Such a spiral begs a definitive and credible answer as to what causes it.
Quite simply, where is the incremental money going and why? Hospitals, doctors? Insurors? Pharmaceuticals? New technology? Lagging technology? Medical errors? Theft? Fraud? Corruption? An aging population? More tests or treatments for patients that don't lower treatment costs in the long run? Patients that demand more tests and treatments? Diminishing competency among medical providers? More pay for medical providers? More dividends for stockholders? More pay for CEOs?
Aren't republicans the most in touch with business. Surely they are not afraid to ask these tough questions? Or are they? Why?
Perhaps the answers to such questions are known, but the politicians don't want the population to know the answers? Now why would that be?
(c) 2010
The answers are already obvious. Where is the incremental money going? To all of the above - you listed them all. Why? Greed, on the part of all parties.
modacto7 you are exactly right. In addition, there is nothing that anyone can do about it as long as all costs are shared across the entire population. Read medical insurance. Medical insurance is bad and should be made illegal.
People are not going to make good financial decisions with regard to health care when there is little to no insentive to make good decisions. Since the cost of medical services is spread across the population why not get every test in the book, take the most expensive pill even when a much cheaper one is available. . .
If we do not have the good sense to make medical insurance illegal then we should require that patients pay a 50% co-pay. At least then they would feel the cost of the waste they are creating.
When the health was being sold to the public, it was sold on the basis that "we can not afford the annual increases in health care cost". When you look at how it is paid for, it is impossible to not have high annual increase in cost, the opposite of the selling point. As an example, how does a 10% tax on medical devices not get passed onto the consumer. The only thing the health care bill accomplished was to provide health care insurance to the uninsured.
If you *really* want to reform health care, you should look at:
1. Banning advertising for prescription drugs. Right now, major pharmaceutical cos. put far more money into ads than into R&D.
2. Limit lawsuits for medical malpractice. There should be safeguards to protect against wanton disregard for patient's lives.
3. Take a hard look at the role the AMA plays in health costs. The AMA functions more like a guild by limiting the no. of physicians in this country. They have a vested interest in holding down the no. of MDs to limit competition.
4. Put in a true public option.
Just one person's opinion.
I don't think any of your suggestions would do much of anything to solve our current health care problems. We need to do one thing to solve health care in America. Make medical insurance illegal. Medical insurance and hospitals having to provide service to anyone that needs it are the problems with our health care system. When the cost of one of the most expensive service in this country is essentially free you cannot control the costs.
Advertising would do little if the patient had to bear the full cost of the medicine. When it costs you the same to take the brand name as it does to take the generic brand why not take the name brand even though it is 50 times more expensive.
Most lawsuites are cause because medical services are more or less free so if any doctor does not perform the exact test that may solve a patients medical issue they are getting sued. If a patient had to pay for every test and the doctor listed every possible test and the cost of each and the patient picked which tests he or she wanted to pay for their would be many fewer law suits.
The supply of MDs and other service providers would be more than enough if every patient had to pay for the services we receive. The demand would go WAY down and we probably would have too many medical providers.
A true public option just makes things worse. Medicine is free it just takes a month to get an appointment to deal with the heart attack you are having.
Just my opinion
Insurance was 40 dollars in 1990 now it's 500 dollars a month now and it does half now as it did in 1990 for you. Insurance companies are nothing more than legalized bookies. When you trust a bookie to cover your bet and you don't have the money your going to pay a fortune. The problem is Americans are Greedy and selfish. Most of the folks complaining of the public option have insurance all ready. Were told that America have the best health insurance which is part true if you have the money America does have the best. But for the 50 million of us and growing working 2 and 3 jobs just to get to work eat and pay rent, health care really isn't even an option. All I really want is to buy the same insurance congress has at their price. just remember all that money that was spent on campaigns this election cycle a good portion of it came from the very insurance companies that didn't even have to disclose it. Everyone in America could be covered with extra left over with all the money spent on political office this cycle. So all I can hope for now is to live long enough to last until 65 so I can get Medicaid.
If you are working or have worked for any substantial time during your life, you will be disappointed. If you qualify for social security you get some kind of Medicare with that. If you get social security, you aint gonna get no Medicaid, that is for people who manage to get on SSI disability (often as children) or who managed to live on government handouts and never paid enough into social security to qualify for Medicare. I get minimum social security and Medicare. My social security is $211 a month after Medicare premiums are deducted from it.
You say these are the thieves when all you have to do is look at our duly elected representatives who voted for their own healthcare, salary, and automatic salary increases for the rest of their lives without having to depend on IRA's, 401K's, and Social Security, that they don't even pay into, and you call Insurance companies thieves???
Gee. There are so many other modern countries that have health care for everybody and they seem to be doing just fine with it that way, but for some reason the US just can't seem to get that done.
What some of our hard hearted Christian members of society fail to realize or probably even care, is that for many the cost of healthcare has not risen! The working poor of this country have no insurance and many of them do not receive any medical care at all! Yet thier fellow citizens who can afford insurance and do receive health care mostly only care about themselves and their cost of insurance! Too bad that many who claim to be Christian do not follow the same standards that the scripture calls for in dealing with your fellow man! Instead of wallowing in pity because the cost of your health care has gone up, try being thankful that you have the means to receive it!
It would not be so bad if the CEO's didn't have their own special "supplemental" health plans which are taxed and can be offered to "key" people.... typical corporate bs....
By not getting input from the Republicans, Obama and Harry Reid had miscalculated what their Health Care Reform would accomplish. It did nothing for the everyday American, but raise their insurance premiums. Very few of the 30 million uninsured are still uninsured. You cannot tackle one problem without going after the root cause, the price of health care itself. Obama and Reid did everything but go at the heart of the problem. Control health care cost and you control health care all together. Half of the legislation would not have been necessary if Obama and Reid just listened to the republicans and place cost controls on health care itself. Too bad opportunity gone, it time to fix the bill that these two know it alls did.
Did those government-created stimulus jobs pass you by?
Are you unemployed?
Do you want a job?
Find a business that hires illegal immigrants. Apply for one of those jobs.
If you don't get the job, protest, picket, and complain to everyone you can using every means available to you.
If you make enough noise you might actually get that job.
If you are not willing to do this, do not complain if you are unemployed, do not complain when your unemployment benefits run out, and do not complain about illegall immigrants taking jobs that American workers should get.
I don't think we should pay for any politicians insurance, we pay it all for them
Medicaid still provides a free ride for millions of U.S. citizens and will soon cover the children of government workers in many states thanks to the tax payers.