Word is employer health care costs are leveling off. Spending overall certainly has slowed.
That's great for them. Not so much for the actual employees. They're footing more of the bill for their own health care costs – whether it's in the form of deductibles or co-pays – than even just a couple of years ago. Workers in increasingly not-so-employer-sponsored plans are paying nearly 40 percent of the cost for their own employee benefits.
(Which incidentally begs the question: When does it stop being an actual benefit? At what price point does the employee benefit become a roadblock? But maybe that's a question for some other time.)
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On one hand, this is something most of us have been demanding for years: More skin in the game makes for more responsible health care decision making. Or so the theory goes.
But you'll have to forgive my cynicism when I see this growing trend emerge around the same times as the passionate pushback (crusade?) against a higher minimum wage – not that any of the jobs that pay it come with any benefits to speak of. At least not of the private sector kind. Especially in the wake of legislation that outlawed limited benefits medical plans.
(It's also worth noting here for the sake of my anti-minimum wage, my tea party friends, that fast food workers collected more than $7 billion in public assistance last year. While Wal-Mart blue vesters made up this country's single largest group of Medicaid recipients at an average of $1,000 an employee. Let's talk again about subsidies…I'll get rid of mine if you get rid of yours…)
And my gag reflex wasn't helped any by my own trip to the surgery center earlier this week. Harley, my adorably demanding 3-year-old, needed to have her jammed up ear tubes removed and replaced. The same procedure just two years ago – which included the removal of her adenoids, as well – cost me a $125 co-pay. Yesterday, I shelled out $540. (And don't think for a second that I've been paying smaller premiums over the last 18 months.)
Hey, of all people, I understand (mostly) the economics of the business we're in – at least as much as the politicians will let me. But this is a rate of inflation that would make a Venezuelan blush.
And you know what doesn't help any of us? One more waiver, delay or administrative never mind. Of course, I'm talking about the administration's latest back step: giving those individual and small group plans another year to get in compliance. So does that still mean Obama broke his promise? What if he added another year or two? (Don't laugh; he just might.)
I haven't seen this much on-the-fly rulemaking since the last time Harley and I played hide-and-seek. Trust me, as the months wear one, I wish we could all hide while the president counts to 24, as in months…
Oh, and before I forget, we're running out of hotel rooms for the Benefits Selling Expo in April in Colorado Springs. Go here to sign up.
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