Employers seek ways to control health costs as efforts hit plateau
KANSAS CITY , Mo. — Employers may have temporarily exhausted their ability to hold down increases in their annual health-benefit costs.
For several years, employers have whittled the annual growth rate in their total health-benefit costs by embracing new types of insurance plans, by redesigning plans and by shifting more costs to employees.
But the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, released last month by Mercer Health & Benefits, says those efforts appear to have hit a plateau.
Nationally, total health-benefit costs to employers rose by 6.1 percent this year, the same rate as last year and the same as expected next year, the Mercer report said, based on a survey of 3,000 U.S. employers.
A more pessimistic cost outlook was released last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which reported that health-benefit costs are expected to jump between 10.7 percent and 11.9 percent in 2007, depending on the insurance plan type.
That increase would be more in line with the double-digit health-benefit cost jumps during the 2001-2003 period that the Mercer report recalled.
The flurry of new health-care cost surveys, which came as millions of American workers went through the annual rite of enrolling in employer-sponsored health plans, adds fodder to an ongoing debate over health-care policy.
Continued escalation in employer-sponsored health insurance costs — whether 6.1 percent or 13 percent — is sure to get close attention from the newly elected Democratic Congress, which has vowed to make controlling health-care costs a priority.
References :http://www.azstarnet.com/ |
