Dealing with increased health-insurance costs

When it comes to health insurance, it’s time to give a happy shout-out to Boulder County and Colorado employers.

Yes – you heard that right.

Even though health-insurance costs have continued to increase about 10 percent every year for the past five years in Boulder County and across the state, employers are bearing the brunt of the increased costs, based on information from the Mountain States Employers Council.

In Boulder, employers picked up 85 percent of health-insurance costs for single people, 70 percent of insurance costs for employees with spouses and 67 percent for employees with families, according to the data. The numbers were similar across the state.

Most companies are bearing the brunt of rising health-care insurance costs rather than passing them to employees.

Some companies passed costs on to employees, too, but most did not, according to the information compiled by Sue Wolf, manager of surveys at the industry trade association.

The association collects the health-insurance data to help its member companies negotiate with insurance brokers, among other things, Wolf said.

The next question, then, is, does your company-paid health-insurance benefit mean more to you than any raise you might receive this year?

It’s hard to tell how employees and employers feel on that question – based on other data collected by the association.

Employee salaries across the state increased an average of 1.6 percent in 2010 and are on track to increase 1.9 percent in 2011. That’s down from peak average increases of 3.6 percent in 2006 and in 2007.

Who says those benefits aren’t important?

In a related finding, customer health-care spending across the country grew at its lowest rate ever in 2010 – 3.9 percent, according to a recent report from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The reason why? So many people have lost their jobs and so many companies have had to stop offering health-insurance coverage that it has had a huge impact on what people can afford when it comes to their health care, according to the report.

An indication that things are getting better in 2011?

Health-care spending is expected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.8 percent from now until 2020, the report said.

Kudos to Salud, Clinica

Health clinics like Salud Family Health Center in Longmont and Clinica Family Health Services in Lafayette are shining stars in the ways that they care for low-income patients, said Joanne Zahora, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.

Clinica Family Health Services recently was recognized in the New England Journal of Medicine for some of its innovative practices.

“Boulder County has worked tirelessly to reach families that are eligible and not enrolled in Medicaid,” Zahora said. “Accolades to Boulder County in community involvement.”

Salud and Clinica are two of the more than 150 Medicaid clinics that are being asked to work on keeping costs down in a new statewide initiative known as the Accountable Care program.

The new Medicaid rules are similar to a tightening up on federal reimbursements for Medicare patients that we told you about recently, which has a bigger effect on hospitals and primary care doctors.

Total Medicaid dollars spent per 1,000 clients in fiscal year 2008-09 was in the range of $7 million to $16.7 million, in Boulder County and in all metro area counties, according to state statistics.

That would work out to a per patient cost of $7,000 to $16,000. The average median cost per 1,000 patients in counties around the state was $6.1 million.

That’s because even though individual clinics are doing great jobs of working with patients, it seems that many low-income patients are sicker than those general population by the time they get to a doctor, Zahora said.

“With the economy the way it is, people who have never needed public health insurance, sometimes they don’t even know about it, so there can be pent-up demand,” Zahora said.

Flu news

On that note, you can do something to take care of your own health – be like the 20 percent of Americans who get flu shots from a pharmacist at a store, rather than at the doctor’s office.

That’s a friendly reminder from Stephen Schatz, a spokesman at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

We know you’re probably not thinking about flu season during the dog days of summer, but it never hurts to have the reminder.

Beth Potter can be reached at 303-630-1944 or email bpotter@bcbr.com.

on Facebook on LinkedIn