Healthcare Costs on the Run

Community Comments

Ideas on How to Cope

By Georgette Jeppesen

     If your company’s health insurance bill is enough to send you to the emergency room, or at least back to your broker or carrier for a second opinion, you’re not alone.            
     According to the 2004 “California Employer Health Benefits Survey,” released by the Oakland-based California HealthCare Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust, California employers have seen double-digit premium increases for each of the past four years, with 2004 posting an 11.4 percent increase over 2003 — more than six times the state’s rate of inflation.            
     Californians laid out an estimated $162 billion in health expenditures in 2003, and on average, 22 percent of company payroll costs went toward health coverage that year, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (www.shrm.org). Experts are predicting cost increases of at least 8 percent to 9 percent annually over the next five years.        
     Reasons for skyrocketing healthcare costs are complex and convoluted, but the results are relatively straightforward. Employers are scrambling to find relief by changing plans, carriers or by eliminating the benefit altogether.            
     According to the CHCF study, 67 percent of California employers offered coverage to their employees in 2004, down from 70 percent in 2003. The reason most often cited for dropping the benefit? Cost.  

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