Employee Health Insurance Premiums up Five Percent
September 24th, 2008
photo credit: Progress Ohio
The Kaiser Family Foundation released a closely followed report of annual health premium increases today, and found that premiums for individual employees rose at a slower pace than past years. This year, the average growth in premiums rose 5%, amounting to an average of $12,680 in total premium costs for a family.
However, according to Wall Street Journal, dig a little deeper and you’ll find that average premiums have a wide variation of 20% above and below the $12,680 mark, which suggests that employees would have a commensurate variance in levels of coverage.
Indeed, in recent years, the firms offering new plans to their employees are consistently lower than the average premium for those paying for older plans. Though this may seem like a step in the right direction it might also piont towards the fact that employees are getting less coverage.
One possible turn in coverage could be attributed to a precipitous rise in health savings accounts. These low-cost, tax-friendly accounts allow individuals to save money for their health costs, but provide little to no coverage in and of themselves, potentially putting families and individuals to foot their entire health bill themselves from their health savings account. In three years, the amount of firms offering high-deductible health plans has nearly tripled, and there seems to be no end in sight for these low-premium, low-coverage plans.
