June 15, 2021

Employers Want Help with Health Costs

The cost of employer health insurance has skyrocketed, and workers are picking up some of that growing tab. Amid employees’ grumbling, employers are loath to push more of the cost onto their workers.

That’s why the consensus view among major employers, expressed in a recent survey, sounded like a cry for help. Calling rising insurance costs “unsustainable,” the vast majority said they need help from the government either to provide alternative forms of coverage or control health care and prescription costs.

Employers “have reached their limit,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, chief executive of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, an employer advocacy organization that collaborated with the Kaiser Family Foundation on the survey.

Employers, she said, “are tired of pouring tons of money into a broken health care market that delivers uneven quality at bloated costs.”

And these are the major corporations and non-profits with more than 5,000 employees. They have some leverage to negotiate with insurers and more financial wherewithal to pay for the plans. Smaller employers – if they provide health insurance at all – pay roughly the same premiums as large employers, and their workers shoulder a larger share of the cost for family plans.

Last year, employers with more than 50 workers paid $21,342 in premiums to cover employees with family plans – that’s still 50 percent more than a decade ago, despite a recent slowdown in health care inflation, according to Kaiser.

When employers’ insurance costs rise so quickly, that squeezes out money they might use for wages and other benefits. Workers are also paying more, though each employer decides how much of the added costs to pass on to workers.

In 2020, employees paid nearly $5,600 – more than a quarter – of employers’ total costs for family plans. To curb their health insurance expenses, employers increasingly are offering high-deductible plans, and the deductibles workers pay for these plans are also rising.

The major employers said in the survey that they’re open to a range of federal policies that would either cut health care costs or get the government more involved in providing health care. …Learn More

April 30, 2020

Unexpected Retirement Costs Can be Big

Resourceful retirees usually weather the financial surprises that come their way. But a handful of unexpected health events can really hurt.

The death of a spouse is at the top of the list. Net worth drops by more than $30,000 over a couple of years as retirees pay for the extraordinary medical and other expenses surrounding a spouse’s death.

Two serious health conditions also deplete retirees’ assets: strokes and lung disease, which strike about one in five older Americans during their lifetimes, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study funded by the U.S. Social Security Administration that tracked changes in the finances of people 65 and over.

Despite the presence of Medicare, a first-time stroke reduces a retired household’s average wealth by more than $25,000 – or 6 percent – and lung disease reduces it by about $29,000.

Net worth in this study includes financial assets and home equity minus debts.

These estimates of the cost of various events provide new information about a few of the many unknowns that go into retirement planning. Workers who may think they are saving enough to cover their routine retirement expenses don’t necessarily factor in medical and related costs that are difficult or impossible to predict.

Taken together, single and married retirees will use anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent of their wealth to pay these unpredictable expenses. But wealthy retirees, who can afford first-rate care, spend much more than the average, while poor people, who have Medicaid to supplement their Medicare, spend very little. …Learn More