Health Insurance Update -- October 4, 2018

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