Health insurance approaches provided by the employer $ 20,000 per year

To cope with the rising cost of coverage for about 100 full-time workers, McDonald Gardens LLC, a retailer and landscaping company based in Virginia Beach, Va., Has increased the deductible of its health plan on more widely used, rising from USD 4,000 to USD 4,000. $ 3000. The company has also increased its own contribution to the premium. The moves reduced the amount workers had to pay on their paycheques, said Debbie LeMaster, Human Resources Manager. "The burden is growing for employees and the employer," she said.

Nationally, employees paid an average of $ 5,547 a year, or 29%, of family plan premiums in 2018, according to Kaiser's employer survey.

For an individual plan, the average total cost of premiums was $ 6,896 in the 2018 survey, or 3% more than last year, with employees paying 18% of the total. According to Kaiser, workers' wages increased by 2.6% and inflation by 2.5% over the past year.

The prices that insurers and employers pay for health care, which are typically set in negotiations between health insurers and hospitals, doctors and other types of health care providers, Mr. Claxton and Dr. 39, other experts said.

A report released earlier this year by the Health Care Cost Institute, a non-profit organization, said that between 2012 and 2016, health care spending growth in insurers' claims from the coverage offered by the employer "was almost entirely due to rising prices", including room visits, admissions to a surgical hospital and drug administration.

HCCI's findings are "quite convincing," said Paul Ginsburg, a professor at the University of Southern California. "The rise in supplier prices is the most important element of higher premiums in recent years."

Other research has linked rising health care prices to mergers that have brought together large hospital systems, often with a range of doctors and other types of health care providers. "Historically, health care providers have banded together," said Michael Chernew, an economist at Harvard University. "This increases their market power and increases their prices."

More recently, on Monday, two major non-profit Texas hospital operators announced plans to reunite, which would create a giant with 68 hospitals in the Gulf of Mexico on the border with Oklahoma.

A recent study by researchers, including Zack Cooper, an assistant professor at Yale University, suggests that prices have risen more than 6% after the merger of nearby hospitals. A separate study published in the Journal of Health Economics in April found that physician prices had risen an average of 14.1% after their integration into hospital systems.

According to the American Hospital Association, hospitals have shown slow price growth in recent years. The group also cited an industry-funded analysis that showed that hospital mergers "can provide substantial savings and provide the funds to fund innovations that can improve quality and convenience."

"Hospitals and health systems reduce expenses while improving outcomes for patients. All other players in the health sector must do the same, "said Tom Nickels, AHA Executive Vice President.

Leaders of the two Texas systems planning to merge said their agreement was aimed at improving efficiency and improving the quality of care.

The Kaiser survey was conducted between January and July of this year and included 2,160 randomly selected employers who responded to the full telephone survey.

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at [email protected]