Health care costs to rise further next year

With the threat of unemployment lingering across the world, thanks to the global economic downturn, health care costs are expected to increase by about 9% next year which is going to further hit workers who still face ambiguity in their job security during the current market downturn. Those workers who are insecure or unclear about losing their permanent jobs are using the health care benefits more while they are still under employment which is raising the medical costs incurred by the organizations and also the insurance companies. The health care reforms that is currently under discussion is expected to only slow down the increase in prices but will not eliminate or put a stop to the inflation.

If the businesses are confronted with such high medical costs, a part of the burden would be off-loaded to employees who would be expected to pay higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles. This would result in increasing the employee’s share for insurance coverage as a part of the employee benefits.

Another factor for the increase the health care costs is the over utilization of resources since the payment system would reward the insurance providers for offering more benefits. This factor has to be fixed in top priority to bring the health care costs under control.