Rising Medical Costs

It's annual enrollment time at my company. We typically get better medical coverage through my wife's employer, but it's still worth looking at every year just in case. This year medical costs are going up again (perpetually). So, I thought I would do a quick comparison to last year's numbers.

I'm making some assumptions here to make it easy to calculate. First is that everybody in my company is choosing the Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) even though there are five different plans to choose from.

Last year our deductible was $700 for the employee, $1400 for the family. This year that has increased to $800 for the employee, $1600 for the family.

I don't want to give the exact monthly withdrawals but the PPO plan has increased almost $420/year for an individual and over $1550 for a family.

That's more than an additional $500 per year an individual pays and over $3000 per year that a family will pay in medical benefits, out of pocket, just at my company. If the person paying for a family was making $100,000 per year, they'd have to get a 3% raise this year just to cover medical benefits. Never mind that the price of everything else is going up too.

We have about 25,000 employees which equates to millions of dollars going straight to the insurance company. I know medical expenses have increased and some of that money goes to those expenses. But I also know insurance company profits are constantly growing too. I'm just curious where the tipping point will be that somebody somewhere (gestures wildly) looks into what's going on and maybe looks at some regulations. #hopeful