Yep, health care inflation is dead!
usatoday.com
Tab for health care rises rapidly
By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
Health insurance premiums rose 13.9% this year, their fastest clip since 1990 — and twice as many Americans fear being unable to afford prescription drugs as worry about stock market losses or becoming unemployed.
The rapid rise in premiums marks the third year of double-digit increases and comes despite a slight downward trend in underlying prices for medical services, according to an employer survey released Tuesday by the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation.
And there's more bad news: Few ideas show promise for slowing health care premium increases.
"We're still a long way from a new big answer or a solution to this problem," says Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the foundation, which also conducted a survey of 1,200 consumers in August.
The employer survey had some good news: Despite a weak economy and rapidly rising health care costs, relatively few employers dropped health insurance coverage this year.
That may be because employers raised the amounts workers pay toward deductibles and premiums, helping to offset the increases, says Paul Ginsburg, an economist at the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
From 2000 to 2003, the amount workers pay toward their premium for family coverage went up nearly 50%, to an average of $2,412 a year from $1,619.
Workers' out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs rose between 46% and 71% in those same years, the survey found.
Those increases may explain why 26% of consumers polled by the foundation said they were very worried that they would be unable to afford prescription drugs, compared with 13% worried about losing savings in the stock market and 12% who feared losing their jobs.
The health insurance premium increases were fueled by higher prices for hospital care, drugs and other services, increased use of medical care and insurers' push for higher profits.
Demand by patients for less-restrictive managed care also played a part.
Since 2000, the average premium for a family plan offered by employers rose to $9,068 from $6,438 — a nearly 41% increase. Small firms and the self-employed saw larger increases.
If that rate of increase continues unabated, a family plan just three years from now could cost more than $12,700.
"That's getting into the crisis area for most employers," says Bill Whitmer, president and chief executive of HERO, a coalition of large employers who say prevention and disease management programs may help slow health spending. |
