Originally published September 27 2005
Businesses can't afford health insurance for employees
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The average cost of health insurance for a family of four now exceeds $10,800, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research Educational Trust, and as insurance premiums rise, many businesses, especially smaller ones, are being forced to stop offering their employees health insurance.
Rising costs are forcing many businesses, especially smaller companies, to stop offering coverage and are causing some employees who can no longer afford insurance at work to buy it on their own --- or go without.
"What we are seeing is an unraveling of the way we finance healthcare in the United States," said William Custer, director for the Center for Health Services Research at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
As the Kaiser report was being released Wednesday, Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz said his company would spend more on health insurance for its employees this year than on raw materials needed to brew its coffee --- a sign, he said, that American businesses face a healthcare crisis.
The Kaiser Foundation survey, published each fall before workers choose policies in open-enrollment periods, is considered the definitive measure of what coverage will cost workers and employers.
The average worker's share of premiums for family health coverage was $2,713 in 2005, or about a quarter of the total cost.
The premium increase is less than the Kaiser survey has found in recent years --- the jump was 11.2% in 2004 and 13.9% in 2003 --- but it continues a trend that is hard on employers and families alike.
Employers, equally hard-pressed by the rising costs, increasingly are dropping health coverage as an employee benefit or offering high-deductible plans that shift more cost --- and more risk --- to employees.
Although Congress has passed some limited healthcare measures, such as a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit, efforts to revamp the system have failed.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans without health insurance continues to grow, with the Census Bureau reporting last year that the number of Americans without coverage grew to a record 45 million.
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