Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Heavy Health Costs, Pt2 -- Even for Insured

These are different times and even those with health insurance who get sick now face a much more heavy burden then what they would expect, according to Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group based in Washington. Not near enough focus has been placed on the effects this staggering economy is placing on employees who even have health insurance, when they need to receive medical care.  A Washington association of about 200 large employers called the National Business Group on Health has been studying this situation. Their president, Helen Darling, has this to say: “It’s a bad-news situation when an individual or household has to pay out-of-pocket three, four or five times as much for their health [insurance] plan as they would have at the time of the last recession.” She makes the point that employees’ pay raises are simply being sucked into health care.

A lot of employers are sympathetic to the financial plight their employees face when made to cover more and more of their medical bills from their dwindling spendable income. The fact remains, tho, that these caring employers are also squeezed by economic realities and can do little to relieve their employees of shifting the burden.  Burgeoning health insurance costs are forcing companies to offer lesser-quality plans to keep costs within what they can bear to maintain good benefits. As stated by Ted Nussbaum, a benefits consultant at the firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide, such a weak economy undermines job security, and now many employees will have to accept lesser benefits and less quality health insurance plans.

To be continued…