10/05/2012 - Myclipp

Business Insurance/ - Article, Dom, 13 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Constitutionality.)
COMMENTARY: Health care cost
increases may be easing
Making accurate predictions about future health care
cost increases is fraught with peril.
In my 35 years with Business Insurance, I"ve seen
periods of double-digit annual increases, a few years
where costs for group plans actually stayed about the
same, and years—as is the case now—where annual
cost increases have stayed in a fairly narrow
range.Why cost increases have been so volatile is
beyond my expertise and perhaps that of many
others.What I do know is that lately there is some
reason for optimism that cost increases may be
easing.For example, last year the Office of Personnel
Management, which administers the Federal
Employee Health Benefits Program—the nation"s
largest group plan with more than 8 million
enrollees—said premium increases for the program
would average 3.8% in 2012, the smallest increase
since 2008 and sharply lower compared with 2011,
when premiums leaped an average of 7.3%.At the
time, OPM officials attributed the easing of premium
increases to effective negotiations with insurers and a
greater emphasis on preventive care.Some employers
I"ve spoken with say better plan design also may be a
factor. One design that some employers have begun,
and which they say is producing results already, is one
in which employees can qualify for more generous
health care plan coverage if they participate in and
complete certain wellness program requirements. I
can"t think of a better incentive to get employees to
take better care of themselves, which ultimately has to
lead to healthier employees and lower health care
costs.
Another positive development is the creation and
expansion of private health insurance exchanges,
which give employees and retirees a far wider choice
of plans than their employers could.Under this
approach, an employer might, for example, give
employees a fixed premium contribution that they can
use to buy coverage in an exchange through which
their employers have contracted.If the employee buys
coverage that costs less than the contribution from his
or her employer, the employee can pocket the
difference. If the coverage costs more, employees
have to make up the difference.To me, that approach
makes a lot of sense. It helps to ensure that each
employee has coverage that meets his or her needs
and that employees aren"t over- or
underinsured.These kinds of approaches are just a few
of the many that employers and insurers are launching
to keep cost increases better under control.To say that
the battle to control costs has been lost is plain
inaccurate. Rather, it is a battle that has hardly begun.
And it is a battle that must continue—regardless of
how the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality
of the health care reform law—to ensure the
continuation of affordable employment-based health
care plan coverage.
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