Firms Reducing Health Benefits, Surveys Find

[question everything]

Source: WSJ

More companies are reducing health benefits or passing rising health-care costs onto employees, say findings from two surveys that underscore the stakes employers and their workers have in the outcome of the health-overhaul debate. The Kaiser Family Foundation, in its annual review of health costs released Tuesday, found that 21% of about 3,200 companies surveyed nationwide reduced benefits or increased cost sharing this year because of the economy, and 15% raised workers' share of premiums. The trend reinforced findings from another large survey of employers that Mercer LLC put out last week. It found that 63% of employers will ask their employees to bear a greater share of expenses next year and 18% plan to eliminate more generous plans.

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The Kaiser study found that some 22% of workers now pay deductibles of more than $1,000, up from 10% in 2006. Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 5% in 2009 to $13,375 for a family, more than doubling from $5,791 ten years ago, Kaiser said. Mercer's initial results indicate that companies are paring back benefits in order to lower health-cost increases to about 6% next year from a projected 9% without such efforts.

With premium costs for her company's coverage increasing by double digits, Kelli Glasser, president and chief operating officer of Exhibit Concepts in Vandalia, Ohio, has pared back benefits. Last year, Ms. Glasser moved to a high-deductible plan, which requires her 88 employees and their dependents to pay for a certain amount of their health-care expenses before their insurance kicks in, though the company reimburses them for part of those costs.

But in January, the economy started to affect her business designing and building exhibits for trade shows and museums, which has slowed by about 20% this year. Then her health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, proposed an 11% increase to take effect this past July. Ms. Glasser knew she had to take action, and in May she laid off 20 people. She switched insurers, raised deductibles to $5,000 for an individual from $2,000, and to $10,000 for a family from $6,000, and raised employees' share of the premium to $53 a week for a family, from $49.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125306132331814219.html

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UnitedHealth - why doesn't this surprise me? After all, they have to somehow pay their executives close to $100 million a year!

[sam sarrha]

1. we got a raise but the company put it into a fund to pay our insurance increases.....

it was written into our contract ny the TEAMSTERS..!!

[maddezmom]

2. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...