| |  |
--
BREAKING NEWS | |
WHY JOHNNY & JILL CAN’T GET AHEAD OF THE BILLS
Employers are pushing 100% of health insurance premium jumps on to them
September 03, 2010
(NATIONAL) -- If you’ve been working at your job for a number of years, have demonstrated increased productivity, loyalty to the firm and have provided ample proof you are a value to the company, yet still find it harder and harder to get ahead financially here may be one reason why: U.S. employers, in a break from the past and tradition, are now dropping all or a major portion of the rapidly escalating costs of health care into your lap.
According to a new report by the Chicago Tribune HERE U.S. workers for the first time in at least a decade are being asked to shoulder the entire increase in the cost of health benefits on their own.
The average worker with a family plan was hit with a whopping 14% premium cost jump this year and that drives the annual tab for the average worker’s health bill to nearly $4,000 a year, according to a survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
That is the biggest annual increase since the survey began in 1999 and a huge change from previous years when employers generally split the rise in the cost of premiums with their employees, according to the report.
Other findings:
~ Almost 33% of employers reported that they either reduced the scope of benefits they offered this year or increased the amount that workers must pay out of pocket for their medical care.
~ Workers saw average co-pays for routine office visits jump 10% while deductible amounts continued to climb higher.
~ This year more than 25% of American workers with employer-provided health coverage were in plans with deductibles of at least $1,000.
~ The survey suggests the actual health coverage workers are being offered is becoming increasingly “unattractive” as employers try to control their costs in the down economy.
~ Kaiser Foundation President Drew Altman is quoted as saying, "We were all so focused on the reform debate that I think we took our eyes off the fact that what we call heath insurance in this country is changing…what workers get looks less and less like the comprehensive coverage their parents had."
| |
|
BACK TO
HOME
| |
|
