Health Insurance Costs Rising No Worries
The primarily large workplaces spent an average of $8,376 per employee on health benefits, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The relatively modest increase followed four years of cost increases above 6 percent for employers who subsidized employee health insurance. Employers, expecting a 10.5 percent rise if they didn’t make changes, increased deductibles and other insurance terms to shift more costs to employees.
The numbers were charted by Mercer, a benefits and management consulting company, in its annual National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.
Some other points:
About 4 in 10 Kansas City employers will raise deductibles, copays, coinsurance or out-of-pocket maximums for their employees in 2010, the survey found. Half said they will raise employees’ share of the premium contribution.
Nearly 1 in 3 of the companies said they were offering health savings or health reimbursement accounts this year and intended to do the same next year.
Preferred provider organizations remain the dominant health delivery system for Kansas City area employees, Mercer found. More than 6 in 10 of the covered employees are enrolled in PPO or point-of-service plans.
About 1 in 4 are in health maintenance organizations, about 1 in 10 in consumer-directed health plans, and only about 1 in 100 are in traditional indemnity plans.
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