I always celebrate the TP Annual Health Care Cost Survey by going down to Circuit City to buy a new pocket protector. Seems like no one is around to help me these days, but if someone is available, they haven't worked there long. Go figure...
I jest, but the Towers Perrin Annuall Health Care Cost Survey (I'm calling it the TPAHCCS for short.. kinda like TPS reports) is always chock full of benchmarks that matter. How much healthcare costs, what companies are paying on average on behalf of their employees, how much the same level of coverage is expected to increase in the next year, etc. Good stuff, good times. Let's dig in with these highlights:
--In flat dollar terms, next year's gross health care expenditure is expected to rise by an average of
$577 per employee, to an average total cost of $9,312.
--Employers are expecting to subsidize 78% of next year's premium costs, and employees will have to cover the remaining 22%, plus usage-based copays, deductibles and co-insurance.
--Employee contributions, on average, will jump by $156 per employee per year to $2,040, an 8% increase that is roughly more than twice that of annual employee merit increases. The combined effect is that over the last five years, out-of-pocket costs for employees have essentially doubled, a clear indication of how pronounced the affordability issue remains, particularly for low-wage workers.
-Analyzing the data by coverage level, the average reported 2008 cost of medical coverage for active-employee-only coverage is $4,704 per year ($392 monthly), $9,660 per year for employee-plus-one-dependent coverage ($805 monthly) and $13,704 per year ($1,142 monthly) for family coverage.
So compare and contrast my friends, and sleep tight knowing you are doing what you can to keep coverage affordable for your employees. Even if it means taking tough medicine like mandatory mail order, etc. Sometimes you have to roll like that, to keep the benefit levels for all, where they are...
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