If you are one of the 155 million Americans who get health insurance from your employer, then rising healthcare costs may be impacting your personal finances even more than you realize.
We know higher healthcare costs lead to higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
But it could also lead to less money in your paycheck each month.
In 2020 the Federal Trade Commission concluded that, “rising health care costs are passed to workers in the form of lower wages and less generous benefits.”
"Workers ultimately bear the cost, and they bear the cost in lower wages," said Katherine Baicker, an economist and professor at Harvard University. "When health care costs go up and health insurance premiums go up, workers' wages rise less quickly than they would otherwise."
In markets where healthcare costs grow at a 10 percent higher than the national average, wages grow at a 4 percent slower rate.
This means that money that would have gone towards a bigger paycheck is now going to cover higher healthcare costs.
What is driving higher healthcare costs?
Hospital and pharmacy price increases.
An analysis of five years of data found that two-thirds of healthcare spending growth was directly liked to price increases.
In other words, spending isn’t going up because people are using more healthcare services. They are going up because hospitals and drug companies keep raising their prices.
This is a big reason why hospitals have found themselves in the hotseat for their billing practices.
States across the country are looking at ways to crack down on many of the unwarranted fees and unjustified out-of-pocket costs.
North Carolina should look at similar measures.
Millions of hard-working people in our state would benefit from it.
.jpeg)
