Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: USA: Assicurazioni sulla salute + 11.2%

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-healthcost10sep10,1,5101598.story?coll
=la-home-business
Health Insurance Costs Jump 11.2%
 Families pay $1,000 more than in 2000. 'This system is broken,' one company
official says.
By Debora Vrana, Times Staff Writer
The cost of providing health insurance for American workers has climbed an
average of 11.2% this year - five times as fast as wages - according to a
survey released Thursday.
It now costs an average of $9,950 to insure an employee and three family
members - about the yearly pay of a full-time minimum-wage worker, according
to the survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and
Educational Trust. Of that, $2,661 is paid by the employee, the rest by the
company.
The jump marked the fourth straight year of double-digit percentage
increases.
"There is a great sense that there is just no answer to this problem," said
Drew Altman, chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit
research organization based in Menlo Park, Calif., that specializes in
healthcare issues. "Just for premium contributions alone, families are
paying $1,000 more this year for their health coverage than they paid in
2000."
As costs squeeze workers and employers, healthcare has become a central
issue in the presidential election campaign.
Several national polls indicate that the cost of care is Americans' top
health concern, trumping issues such as obesity, aging and access to medical
care, and Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts cited the
Kaiser findings at a campaign event Thursday in Iowa.
If the trend continues, analysts said, more companies will stop offering
health benefits to their workers and more wage earners - especially those
with families - will join the ranks of the uninsured because they will no
longer be able to afford their share of the costs. Businesses, already
hemmed in by energy costs and a balky economy, count rising insurance
premiums as another reason to pare back expansion plans and forgo new
hiring.
"This system is broken, in our opinion," said Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman
for General Motors Corp., the world's biggest automaker. "To a certain
extent, we can try to control costs with various programs, but at the end of
the day, we need the input and support of the government to make reforms
here."
GM's healthcare costs are expected to top $5 billion this year, or $1,400
for each vehicle the company sells, Dubrowski said.
Kaiser, which is not affiliated with health insurer Kaiser Permanente,
surveyed 3,017 U.S. companies for the study. Although the 11.2% increase in
healthcare premiums this year represents an improvement over last year's
13.9% jump, the report provided few other comforting statistics.
Since 2000, the cost of employee health insurance has risen 59%, Kaiser
found, and workers' share of their health insurance premiums has surged 57%
for individual coverage and 49% for a family. During that period, wages
increased just 12% - 2.2% this year.
The number of jobs offering health insurance is plummeting, with 5 million
fewer jobs offering healthcare benefits in 2004 than in 2001, the survey
found. The U.S. Census Bureau reported recently that the number of Americans
without healthcare grew last year to a record 45 million.
"Employees are declining coverage because they can't afford it, and
employers are dropping coverage because they can't afford it," said Kirby
Bosley, head of the healthcare practice at Mercer Human Resource Consulting
in Los Angeles. "There's only so much in costs they can shift to employees."
The survey also indicated that many workers could expect their health
insurance costs to continue to rise. More than half of the companies
surveyed that employ more than 200 workers said they were "very likely" to
increase the amount of employee contributions in the next year. Only 15% of
smaller firms - which are much less likely to provide health coverage for
their workers - said they would do so.
Blue Cross of California, one of the nation's biggest health insurers,
expects premiums to go up about 10% next year, depending on an employer's
insurance plan. Michael Chee, a spokesman for the Thousand Oaks-based
company, said this year's increase represented a "leveling off" in medical
costs but warned: "Medical costs are not going to go down."
The rise in costs is being driven largely by bigger insurance claims that
stem from higher prices for hospital services and prescription drugs, as
well as growing demand for healthcare as the population ages, Kaiser found.
Employers and others also have blamed profiteering by big insurers and
hospital chains.
Facing these pressures, even some of the world's wealthiest employers have
been forced to make changes.
Microsoft Corp. has for years offered among the most complete health
benefits packages imaginable - the company covers all employee premiums
without deductibles for workers, their families and domestic partners. But
in May, the world's biggest software company introduced its first
co-payment, albeit only for some prescription drugs.
Small businesses have been especially hard hit.
Brian Collier, a Los Angeles painting contractor, said the cost of insuring
his 30 workers rose 19% last year, forcing him to cut back on raises. As it
is, only four employees have opted for the high-priced coverage.
"We're in America, and with our GNP [gross national product], it seems to me
very sad that everyone does not have health coverage," Collier said. "How
many people die here every day because they don't have adequate healthcare
coverage?"
In Des Moines, where Kerry met Thursday morning with several hundred voters,
the Democratic presidential nominee cited the report as he assailed
President Bush over the sharp rise in healthcare costs during his
administration.
"Mr. President, it's wrong to allow skyrocketing healthcare costs to choke
off new jobs, eat up family incomes and leave millions uninsured, living in
daily fear and on the brink of medical disaster," Kerry said.
Kerry is backing a $653-billion plan that would expand government programs.
The Bush campaign responded with a detailed defense of the president's
healthcare policies, noting that medical costs aren't set by the federal
government and were rising long before Bush took office. The Bush camp
highlighted the Kaiser report's finding that the annual rise in health
insurance premiums slowed this year for the first time since 1996 and
attacked the Democratic challenger's proposals as costly.
"Kerry's 'savings' of 10% is simply a shift of healthcare costs to the
American taxpayer," the Bush campaign said.
Bush is promoting an $89-billion plan that would cut costs by limiting
malpractice awards against doctors and giving workers more control over
their medical spending.
Washington hasn't been immune to rising medical costs. In early September,
federal officials announced a 17% increase in premiums for Medicare, the
government's health program for the elderly.
The push by some employers to pass on more of the rising cost of employee
benefits has increased tensions in the workplace. Health insurance was a
major factor in the recent Southern California supermarket strike, which
ended after 4 1/2 months with the union agreeing to less generous medical
benefits for new employees.
"This report confirms what purchasers [of healthcare] in California are
seeing," said Peter Lee, president of San Francisco-based Pacific Business
Group on Health, which negotiates healthcare rates for large employers.
"There was a slight reduction in rate, but it's still unbearable."
One of the more "ominous" findings in the report, Lee said, was the
increasing tendency of companies to offer high- deductible plans with no
incentives for workers to seek preventive care, such as mammograms and
annual physicals.
"We may be redefining what health insurance means in America," he said.

 dopodiche paghi $20 per medicinale...
Il co-payment tuo e` alto, io pago 10 dollari.
Il deductible tuo e` alto, sopra la media nazionale.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20040326ar01p1.htm
se lavori in una compagnia medio-piccola fai tu delle ricerche, io ho fatto
cosi` ( ho assegnato il compito ad un`assistente che ha trovato un ottimo
Medical Plan), poi` l`ho presentato al padrone della compagnia. Certo c`e` da
sgambare, altro che mutua garantita. 
Ci sono da aggiungere tre cose : se hai bisogno di un mammogramma, non devi
aspettare sei mesi come nei paesi civili a forma di stivale.
La qualita` e` elevatissima, almeno qui nel Midwest.
Puoi addirittura rifiutare l`assicurazione, e tenerti i soldi ( c`e` chi lo fa,
the gambler). E se lo stato rimuovesse questa opzione?
Diminuirebbero gli uninsured, e gli europei sarebbero contenti...:-))).
greetings
-----------------------------------------
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http://www.excite.it/newsgroup

 the gambler).
Ci ho pensato, ma con tre figli, + uno in arrivo, that is not an option.
Un anno e mezzo fa mio figlio ha avuto un' operazione al cervello, che 
e' costata ~ $31K . Grazie al mio "out-ou-pocket-maximum, ho pagato 
$2000 . No, andare senza assicurazione, non fa per me.
