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Bucks Blog: Rising Out-of-Pocket Health Costs

November 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I looked over some medical statements recently and realized that even though my family had spent roughly $3,000 out of pocket for health care this year, we would still fail to meet our annual deductible.

We’re not alone. Workers who get health insurance through their employers have seen the average deductible nearly double over the last six years, a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds.

In 2012, 72 percent of covered workers face a general annual deductible, up from 52 percent of workers in 2006, according to a deeper look at data from the Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey. Among workers who have an annual deductible, the average deductible for single coverage, across all types of plans, is $1,097 this year, up from $584 in 2006.

Those working at smaller companies — those with fewer than 200 workers — were more likely to have higher deductibles, the analysis found.

Now, I’m not necessarily complaining — even though the $3,000 that was spent on health care is $3,000 that won’t go into our retirement account, or into our children’s college funds. We knowingly opted for a higher deductible to keep our monthly premiums lower. And we had savings to cover the costs that the our insurance plan didn’t.

But what about families who are living paycheck to paycheck, and don’t have backup savings?

Previous surveys have found that some families forgo needed care because of the higher costs.

“While many working families have sufficient savings and coverage in case of a medical emergency,” the analysis concluded, “the growth in workers’ contributions and cost sharing may increasingly become a financial strain on some households.”

Have you noticed that you’re paying more for health care? How are you managing higher deductibles?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/rising-out-of-pocket-health-costs/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Stocks Decline on Fiscal Concerns in U.S. and Europe

November 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Stocks on Wall Street closed lower on Tuesday, as fears about fiscal battles in Washington and the troubles in Greece tipped major indexes from gains to losses throughout the day. A surge in shares of Home Depot prevented a steeper drop for the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Dow closed down closed down 58.90 points, or 0.5 percent, at 12,756.18. It would have been lower without support from Home Depot, whose stock jumped 3.6 percent after the company beat expectations for its fiscal third-quarter earnings. Home Depot is benefiting from the gradual housing recovery and rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Sandy. Its stock rose $2.22 to $63.38.

Stocks had opened lower after European leaders postponed the latest aid package for Greece. The Dow turned positive in the first hour of trading and rose solidly through the morning, gaining as much as 83 points. Starting around 2 p.m., the average slid steadily into the red.

Other indexes also closed lower. The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index lost 5.50 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,374.53. The Nasdaq composite index fell 20.37 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,883.89.

Investors are trading against the backdrop of federal spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect automatically at the beginning of next year unless United States leaders reach a compromise before then.

Worries about this possibility pushed United States stocks to one of their worst weekly losses of the year last week after voters re-elected President Obama and a deeply divided Congress. Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with labor leaders and others who advocate higher taxes on the wealthy and want to protect health benefits for seniors and other government programs. The president will meet with business leaders Wednesday.

“The longer we sit and do nothing” about the nation’s fiscal issues, “the more this market is going to oscillate between positive 40 and negative 60, until we know what’s going to happen next with all this uncertainty,” said Craig Johnson, senior technical research strategist with Piper Jaffray Company in Minneapolis.

Mr. Johnson says he expects the S. P. 500 to climb to 1,550 in the next six months as investors get over their lingering unease from the recent recession and companies understand better how government policy on taxes, health care and spending will affect them.

European stocks had been lower but rose after trading opened in New York. Benchmark indexes in France, Britain and Germany closed modestly higher.

Traders in Europe are concerned because finance ministers, in a surprise, postponed $40 billion in aid desperately needed for Greece. A day earlier, there was word that leaders had prepared a positive report on Greece, making it appear likely that the aid would be released.

“It’s a little bit like ‘Groundhog Day,’ ” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group, referring to the movie whose protagonist, played by Bill Murray, must relive the same day over and over. Until there is decisive news from Washington or Brussels, neither of which appears imminent, markets will remain vulnerable to short-term swings caused by headlines, Mr. Colas said.

The next major catalysts for a market move, he said, will be gauges of spending by consumers on the traditional shopping rush on the day after Thanksgiving.

The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year notes rose 7/32, to 100 9/32, while the yield slid to 1.59 percent, from 1.61 percent late Friday, as demand increased for ultrasafe investments. The United States bond market was closed on Monday in observance of the Veterans Day holiday.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: Will High-Deductible Health Insurance Plans Become the Norm?

September 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As the cost of health insurance continues to rise, workers can expect to see high-deductible plans, with ever-higher deductibles, becoming the norm, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts.

“It’s the biggest tool in the toolbox that employers have to hold costs down,” said Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the foundation, in a telephone call today with reporters.

Mr. Altman made the remarks while discussing the findings of the annual Employer Health Benefits Survey conducted by the foundation and the Health Research Educational Trust. The study is based on a telephone survey of 2,088 randomly selected public and private employers with three or more workers, conducted between January and May of this year. The study found that the average cost of work-based family health coverage rose by 9 percent this year, after several years of more modest increases.

The survey reported that the number of employees covered by high-deductible health plans, and the number of companies offering the plans, jumped this year, “as employers seek more affordable coverage options and are potentially seeking to shift increased costs to workers.”

This year, 17 percent of covered workers were enrolled in such plans, compared with 13 percent last year and just 8 percent in 2009. And 23 percent of firms offering health benefits offer them, up from 15 percent last year. The plans, which typically are paired with health savings or reimbursement accounts, generally carry lower premiums for workers, but have higher annual deductibles than other plans. Plans that can be used with health savings accounts, for instance, must have a deductible of least $1,200 for an individual and $2,400 for a family.

Mr. Altman described the shift to high-deductible plans as a “quiet revolution” that was redefining employer-based health insurance in the United States, from a service that offered wide-ranging, comprehensive coverage to one that offered limited coverage: “The nature of what we call health insurance is changing, without a great deal of analysis or debate.”

The idea behind the high-deductible plans is to have consumers pay closer attention to costs when they seek health care. But, as one reporter on the conference call noted, it remains difficult for patients to get reliable up-front information about the pricing of health procedures.

Have you enrolled in a high-deductible health plan? Has it made you more cost-conscious when you seek treatment?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c8d56c15d02962e971195173758e171a

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