NPR – Some 154 million people get health insurance through their employer — and many could see their paycheck deductions surge next year, by 6% to 7% on average. Some will likely also see their out-of-pocket costs rise as employers pass along the spiking costs of care.
That’s because employers will be paying a lot more — almost 9% more per employee on average, for the same level of coverage — to provide health benefits for their workers.
Even after cutting or changing their health care benefits, employers are facing the biggest price increase in 15 years, according to a new survey of more than 1,700 organizations by Mercer, a benefits consultancy.
And 59% of those employers told Mercer they plan to pass those higher prices along to their workers in the form of “cost-cutting changes,” such as higher deductibles, copays or other out-of-pocket costs, such as prices for filling prescriptions.
“It’s almost a perfect storm that’s hitting employers right now,” says Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health policy research nonprofit.
“The price of health care is going up faster than it has in a long time,” he adds. “And typically when an employer is getting a big increase from an insurer, the employer is turning around and trying to pass on some or all of that to its workers.”
Grocery prices jumped 0.6% in August, fueling a sharper-than-expected jump in inflation last month. Over the last 12 months, grocery prices have risen 2.7%.
The surging health benefit costs come at a time when consumers are still feeling the hangover of pandemic-era record inflation and are generally uneasy about the U.S. economy. Though inflation has cooled considerably in the past two years, prices are starting to tick up again, as many of President Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports go into effect …
