By REED ABELSONSEPT. 22, 2015
It may not seem like much — just an extra hundred dollars or so a year.
But the steady upward creep in health insurance deductibles has easily outpaced the average increase in a worker’s wages over the last five years, according to a new analysis released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Kaiser, a health policy research group that conducts a yearly survey of employer health benefits, calculates that deductibles have risen more than six times faster than workers’ earnings since 2010.
“It’s a very powerful trend,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser’s chief executive.
Four of five workers who receive their insurance through an employer now pay a deductible, in which they must pay some of their medical bills before their coverage starts, according to Kaiser.
Those workers’ deductibles have climbed from a yearly average of $900 in 2010 for an individual plan to above $1,300 this year, while employees working for small businesses have an even higher average of $1,800 a year. One in five workers has a deductible of $2,000 or more.
Amazing how BoE and Village employees and retirees bear NONE of the annual increase in their healthcare deductibles ?!?! That’s right folks, taxpayers are on the hook for 100% of any annual increase in premiums and/or deductibles. Ain’t life grand for the union employees who are gouging Village taxpayers every chance they get? See the protracted BoE negotiations with their greedy union as another example. More more more !!!