Consumers, meanwhile, who are paying a greater share of the cost, are making spending adjustments. Many are delaying care, using fewer services and choosing less expensive options such as retail clinics, urgent care centers and mobile health devices.
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PwC's Health Research Institute projects historic slowdown in healthcare spending growt... - 0 views
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“Healthcare cost increases continue to exceed overall growth in wages, but the gap appears to be shrinking. The long-term trends suggest that as the economy improves, the cycle of runaway cost increases will be broken,” said Michael Thompson, principal with PwC’s human resource services practice. “This is critical as employers strategically reevaluate the role of healthcare benefits to their organizations and step up efforts to engage employees more directly in value-based healthcare decision making.”
IOM Finds Differences In Regional Health Spending Are Linked To Post-Hospital Care And ... - 0 views
Employers Turn to Private Health Exchanges to Cut Costs - Bloomberg - 0 views
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One-third of U.S. employers plan to move their workers’ health-care coverage to a private exchange in the next few years, a survey found, following the le
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Health spending in the U.S. is expected to increase more than 6 percent this year and 6.2 percent annually from 2015-2022 as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes full effect and millions of Americans gain insurance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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Under Obamacare, companies that don’t offer coverage for their employees will be fined $2,000 per employee. Employers spend $6,000 per employee on average, so d
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Slowdown in Health Spending Could Be at Risk - WSJ.com - 0 views
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Medicare covers all those treatment options. By law, it can't consider price when making coverage decisions. Nor can it insist that a new technology be significantly better than existing ones or encourage doctors or patients to seek less-costly alternatives. And once Medicare starts writing checks, private health plans generally follow, distorting the usual market mechanisms, says Arthur Kellermann, a physician and senior policy analyst at Rand Corp.
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Another big driver of health-care costs is technology. In almost every other industry, innovation generally makes things more efficient and less costly. But in health care, it often brings higher costs with little added value.
5 Smart Ways Your Company Should Spend The Obamacare Delay - Forbes - 0 views
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Remember, the best employees are or will become Intelligent, Connected, Health Consumers. They’ll appreciate it if you empower them to make a difference in their own coverage. Give them access to innovative services like Castlight Health. Castlight is a “health care transparency solution” which can tell you, for example, that the same colonoscopy you’ll get in Chicago can cost hundreds of dollars less at a quality hospital a few miles away. Explain to your employees that the money they save can end up in their pocket—and be willing to shar
HEALTH REFORM: Expect Pluses, Minuses for Those With Job-Based Coverage - iVillage - 0 views
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Beginning in 2014, for instance, the reform package prohibits employer-sponsored health plans from excluding people from coverage based on pre-existing health conditions
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It also makes larger employers responsible for offering medical coverage. Beginning Jan. 1, 2015, businesses with more than 50 workers must offer health insurance to full-time workers and dependents or pay penalties.
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annual limits will be banned completely in 2014.
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Experts say smaller companies that employ 50 or more workers and currently provide health insurance may drop coverage because it would be cheaper to pay fines than maintain coverage for all of their workers. Most large employers (with more than 1,000 employees) remain committed to providing health benefits for the next five years, according to an employer survey by Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health. But just 26 percent are confident that they will be offering health-care benefits a decade from now. Meanwhile, a number of large employers are eyeing private health insurance exchanges as a way to continue providing job-based coverage while controlling spending on health benefits. Much like the public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, private exchanges represent a new way for employees and families to shop for group health coverage and other benefits. Instead of offering a limited number of health plans, the employer would give workers a set amount of money to buy their own coverage. Kaiser, who works in Gallagher Benefit Services' Mount Laurel, N.J., office, anticipates a slow migration toward private exchanges. "I don't think it's going to be a mass disruption of employer-sponsored plans where they all go, 'I'm out of the game,'" he said. More information The University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, has summarized provisions of the Affordable Care Act affecting employer-sponsored insurance.
Costliest 1 Percent Of Patients Account For 21 Percent Of U.S. Health Spending - Kaiser... - 0 views
Mass. to spend $118M to defray cost of Obamacare plans - Boston Business Journal - 0 views
What you need to know about the cap on out-of-pocket spending delay - Articles - Employ... - 0 views
States experimenting to lower health care costs - 0 views
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"Look at any of the long-term projections for the federal budget or for state budgets," said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. "If we don't bring down health care costs, we're either going to be paying a whole lot more in taxes or we're going to stop spending money on other things we care about."
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"It has to end eventually," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, "because we can't have an economy driven entirely by health care."