Average health care costs for U.S. employers rose by 7.3 percent in 2009, surpassing inflation and the growth rate in overall health care spending, a Thomson Reuters report said Monday.
Overall U.S. health care spending, including Medicare, Medicaid, and other payers, grew by 4.8 percent in 2009, the report found.
“In a year when inflation was non-existent, employer health care costs continued to surge,” Chris Justice of the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters, who wrote the report, said in a statement.
“This analysis puts the real-world health care challenges facing employers into perspective. These cost increases have come at a particularly difficult time for U.S. companies.”
Justice and his colleagues analyzed National Health Expenditures data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary for the report, available here.
They said the year-over-year increase compared to a rise of 6.1 percent in 2008.
The team at Thomson Reuters, parent company of Reuters, analyzed insurance claims data for 144 small, medium-sized, and large companies that provided health benefits to 9.5 million people.
Smaller employers with 5,000 or fewer workers saw costs rise the most, with health care spending up 9.8 percent.
Medium-sized employers of 5,000 to 50,000 people had a 10-percent rise in costs compared to 6.5 percent in 2008. For large companies with more than 50,000 employees, costs rose 5 percent in 2009, down from 5.8 percent in 2008.
The Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation awaiting the president’s approval would extend coverage to 32 million Americans who lack it, ban insurers from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and cut deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. If realized, the expansion of coverage would include 95 percent of all eligible individuals under age 65. Commercial Loan Workout.
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