Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Inadequate Health Insurance Looms, Pt.2 – Cost trend bad; adequacy trend worse.

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Mr. Gabel brings to the table twenty years of research concerning employee health insurance benefits.  His work is considered the “most widely followed and respected survey of the cost of employee health benefits,” as Mr. Boulton describes it.  What this recent survey shows is how the cost of health insurance benefits has kept slowly climbing over the past 5 years and worse, the continued deterioration of what those benefits offer.  Especially disheartening was the fact that, while the health insurance costs had actually doubled over 10 years, the benefits delivered continued to decline.

This annual survey is now sponsored by an affiliate of the American Hospital Association called the Health Research & Educational Trust and also by the Kaiser Family Foundation.  The Kaiser Family Foundation is one of the most respected health insurance/care policy research organizations.  This year’s survey, which was released last month, had a theme.  That theme was the foreboding truth that the modest rising costs of health insurance were the lesser of two dangers.

The more significant danger was growing acceptance of inadequate health insurance.  Catastrophic high-deductible plans are replacing the comprehensive plans which most families need.

When factoring this growing trend with the shattered economy, strong indications are for employers to continue moving over to these inadequate health insurance plans.  Just as bad, many more employers will simply opt out of offering employer health benefits altogether.

These are troubling trends and have only recently come into the national spotlight when other dedicated health insurance/car research organizations like the Commonwealth Fund decided to delve much deeper into the lives of this huge group of 25 million Americans.

Continued…
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