Employers Face Rising Healthcare Premiums Again in 2002
PacifiCare Dental Offers California PPO; Defibrillator Study Winds Down
HEALTHCARE
by Vita Reed
With the New Year approaching, employee benefits consultants are busy issuing previews and reviews of how healthcare costs behaved in 2001.
William M. Mercer Inc., which has an office in Orange, recently released its Employer-Sponsored Health Plans report. The study detailed what many employers already know: this year’s costs saw the highest jump in a decade.
The average cost of healthcare benefits for active employees rose to $4,924 this year, up from $4,430 in 2000, an 11.2% jump.
For Southern California employers, Mercer said that the total healthcare benefit cost for active employees was $5,026 this year, up 11.8% from last year.
For 2002, Mercer’s Southern California respondents said they expect costs to continue to rise, up 13%. National respondents said they expect their healthcare costs to go up 12.7% on average. About 15% of the total study pool said they expect their healthcare cost increases to be 20% or higher.
And employees should expect to share more of the costs. Forty percent of Mercer’s larger employers said they would require their workers to pay a higher percentage of total costs in the coming year; more than a third said they would hike deductibles, co-pays or out-of-pocket maximums.
The double-digit trend shouldn’t stop, said Blaine Bos, a Mercer consultant and study co-author.
“Not with all those aging baby boomers still working,” he said. “Unless a new silver bullet materializes,like managed care in the ’90s,this rising tide may become a full-fledged flood.”
Managed care is credited with checking health costs in California better than in the rest of the country, said Tim Upson, a consultant in Mercer’s Orange office. But that’s changed, according to Upson: “After years of low or no HMO increases, employers are now paying the price.”
Mercer’s data showed that HMO costs for businesses with 500 or more employees shot up 15% this year, compared to 11.5% for less-restrictive preferred provider organization plans.
Mercer surveyed more than 2,800 U.S. employers; 87 of those were in southern California.
PacifiCare Unit Offers New Products
PacifiCare Dental, Santa Ana, said it introduced a new dental preferred provider organization series in California. PacifiCare Dental is a subsidiary of Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.
Officials said the series includes expanded plan designs to accommodate employers’ varying needs and budgets. Benefits are covered at a percent of usual, customary and reasonable charges, or on a fee schedule.
Employees who use in-network coverage will get discounts, and most plans offer 100% coverage for preventive dental work. PacifiCare said that the PPO plans could be purchased either alone or with its dental HMO plan.
The National Association of Dental Plans, a Dallas-based trade group, reports that the dental PPO is the fastest-growing segment of the dental health plan market, showing double-digit increases since 1996. About a third of the dental market,about 43.7 million Americans,is enrolled in dental PPOs. Dental PPOs are characterized by contracted networks of dentists that offer services at reduced costs, but they also allow enrollees the freedom to select a dentist from outside such networks.
Defibrillator Study Done
A National Institutes of Health-backed study on the effect of heart defibrillation devices on patients who have survived heart attacks and have weakened hearts recently was nixed. But participants will be getting their devices within the next 30 days, according to an Orange County cardiologist who was one of the study’s principal investigators.
“There is no need to resume the trial. (The question) has been answered,” said Dr. Kelly Tucker of the Orange County Heart Institute, Orange. The study was stopped after researchers found that defibrillators reduced the death rate by 30% in patients who received them. Defibrillators give shocks to hearts in cardiac arrest, helping to restart the heart to beat at normal cardiac rhythms.
The study was started in 1997 and was funded by Guidant Corp., Indianapolis, a maker of implantable defibrillators. Around 1,200 patients were enrolled at more than 70 centers in the U.S. and Europe, including the Orange County Heart Institute.
Tucker noted that the Orange County Heart Institute was the top enroller in the study’s Western region, with about 40 patients.
Bits and Pieces:
LifeMasters Supported SelfCare Inc., Irvine, is among 18 groups that signed up to participate in a new disease management accreditation and certification program launched by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The committee is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that tackles healthcare quality issues … Lathian Systems Inc., Newport Beach, is providing services to Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Inc., a New Jersey-based unit of Novo Nordisk AS of Denmark Dr. Richard Weiss, a Newport Beach ophthalmic surgeon, introduced a device he developed for refractive surgical procedures last month at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting in New Orleans. The device, called the Weiss Vertexometer, measures the vertex distance prior to refractive surgery Comforce Corp., Woodbury, N.Y., added a medical office support-staffing component in its Irvine office. The office provides coders, medical records personnel, billers and transcriptionists.
