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Health-Insurance Costs Are Taking Biggest Jumps in Years
WSJ ^ | Sept. 7, 2023 5:30 am ET | By Anna Wilde Mathews

Posted on 09/07/2023 10:47:07 AM PDT by Red Badger

Health-insurance costs are climbing at the steepest rate in years, walloping businesses and their workers.

Costs for employer coverage are expected to surge around 6.5% for 2024, according to major benefits consulting firms Mercer and Willis Towers Watson, which provided their survey results exclusively to The Wall Street Journal.

Willis Towers Watson, which goes by the initials WTW, projects the increase will be the biggest in more than a decade.

Such a boost could add significantly to the price tag for employer plans that already average more than $14,600 a year per employee, driving up health-insurance costs that are among the biggest expenses for many American companies and a drain on families’ finances.

For people who have individual insurance plans sold under the Affordable Care Act, premiums are also expected to rise by about 6% next year, according to public insurance filings analyzed by health-research nonprofit KFF, though that increase is comparable to this year’s.

Among the factors leading to the faster health-insurance cost growth are hospitals’ higher labor costs and heavy demand for new and expensive diabetes and obesity drugs.

The employer-plan increases are expected to strike businesses of all sizes, and regardless of whether they rely on an insurer to handle their health coverage or are self-insured.

Many workers will learn about their workplace coverage options for 2024 in the next few months, during the annual fall open-enrollment period. They will likely end up paying more out of their paychecks for it as the overall expense goes up and some employers lift out-of-pocket costs to help offset the increases.

Yet many employers are expected to take on the lion’s share of the increase, partly due to a labor market that remains tight in many sectors, benefits consultants said.

(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; History; Society
KEYWORDS: healthinsurance; insurance
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1 posted on 09/07/2023 10:47:07 AM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

I thought OBAMACARE FIXED ALL THAT?!?!?!?!?.................


2 posted on 09/07/2023 10:47:29 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

Well there goes our Social Security COLA .....


3 posted on 09/07/2023 10:49:52 AM PDT by wardamneagle
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To: Red Badger

Gotta pay for all those trans surgeries.


4 posted on 09/07/2023 10:50:03 AM PDT by Right Brother
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To: Red Badger

I guess they forgot to factor in inflation as well as health care for illegals.


5 posted on 09/07/2023 10:50:14 AM PDT by caver
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To: wardamneagle

What Social Security giveth, Medicare taketh away...............


6 posted on 09/07/2023 10:51:24 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: caver

What inflation?

What illegals?

The economy is booming!

People are happy!

The world is beautiful!

KJP tells us every day!..................


7 posted on 09/07/2023 10:52:45 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger; All

It’s a racket. Trump began fixing it with caps on certain drugs. (I don’t remember the specifics). Also, there is a lot of doctor and hospital fraud. No one cares because “Medicare pays for it. “ Most People don’t realize we pay for it.


8 posted on 09/07/2023 10:54:14 AM PDT by Cobra64 (Common sense isn’t common anymore)
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To: Red Badger

Hospital Out-Patient Co-Pays have risen from $90 in 2021 to $200 today, for Medicare patients.


9 posted on 09/07/2023 11:01:53 AM PDT by G Larry (It is RACIST to impose SLAVE WAGES on LEGAL Immigrants by importing Cheap ILLEGAL Labor!)
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To: Red Badger

how’s that obamacare working out for ya ...


10 posted on 09/07/2023 11:02:10 AM PDT by catnipman (In a post-covid world, ALL "science" is now political science: stolen elections have consequences)
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To: Red Badger

Gotta pay for all those illegal aliens and refugees. They need health care, hotels, housing, money, food for free.


11 posted on 09/07/2023 11:03:59 AM PDT by dforest
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To: Red Badger

The Vax injuries are coming home to roost.


12 posted on 09/07/2023 11:04:05 AM PDT by JJBookman (Democrats = Party of killing off humanity )
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To: Red Badger

You mean... the Government spent billions trying to make health care cheaper and it got more expensive? Just like we said it would?

Whodathunkit?


13 posted on 09/07/2023 11:05:57 AM PDT by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)
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To: Red Badger

The CERTAIN Destruction Of Our Nation

“I have been writing and speaking on this since I ran MCSNet in the 1990s. It has been a focus of this column since it was formed in 2007, including in this column written in 2012. We have willfully and intentionally, as a nation, ignored this issue for the last decade and we are now facing the destruction of our economy, our markets, our government, our society and our way of life if we do not put a stop to the pillaging of our economy and people NOW.”

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231561


14 posted on 09/07/2023 11:06:40 AM PDT by packagingguy
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To: Red Badger

With 10% inflation, that’s really a low increasem


15 posted on 09/07/2023 11:11:20 AM PDT by Fido969 (45 is Superman! )
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To: catnipman

Hillarycare/Obamacare is working just as designed.


16 posted on 09/07/2023 11:12:14 AM PDT by Texas resident (We are living through Barak's fundamental transformation)
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To: JJBookman

Huh? Using a vaccine to teach the immune system how to recognize a pathogen so that it is ready to fight if you are exposed to the real thing does not cause diabetes or obesity, which are given as two reasons health insurance costs are spiking.

Obesity and some diabetes is caused by eating too much.

Also, the more people who are protected against serious Covid disease, the lower the overall health care costs become.


17 posted on 09/07/2023 11:25:42 AM PDT by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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To: exDemMom

The problem with the vaxxes is they do not prevent anything.

That money is going from everybody’s pocket to Big Pharma.

It is one big racket—with a propaganda arm second to none.


18 posted on 09/07/2023 11:31:32 AM PDT by cgbg ("Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." Anna Freud.)
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To: Red Badger

All this stuff going up and corporations are not giving raises to workers.


19 posted on 09/07/2023 11:47:21 AM PDT by pas
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To: Red Badger

Healthcare in the United States is an abomination when it comes to billing.


20 posted on 09/07/2023 11:50:42 AM PDT by glorgau
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