Link here.
The average cost of employer health coverage offered to workers rose
to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new
survey, capping years of increases that experts said are chiefly tied to
rising prices paid for health services.
Annual premiums rose 5% to $19,616 for an employer-provided
family plan in 2018, according to the yearly poll of employers by the
nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Employers, seeking to blunt the cost
of premiums, also continued to boost the deductibles that workers must pay out of their pockets before insurance kicks in.
“That’s one of the things that lets them
reduce premium costs, shifting more of the cost to workers,” said Gary
Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
McDonald Gardens LLC, a retailer and landscaping company in the
Virginia Beach, Va., area, has about 100 full-time workers. To deal
with the rising cost of coverage, it raised the deductible on its most
widely used health plan to $4,000 a year, from $3,000. The company also
increased its own premium contribution.
I can't get my head around this. We're well beyond any likelihood of bringing health care costs down in the US. The big question is how to compare these expenditures, not dollar amount, but as percentages:
- military spending -- total, including classified
- military spending -- total, without classified
- military spending -- absolutely necessary
- military spending -- fair share
- basic income for all
- Medicare for all
- Medicare as it is now
- Social Security -- total
- Social Security Disability
- interest on federal debt
- total worth of top 1% in US
- total worth of top 5% in US
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