Employers who provide health care to their workers saw their costs climb to an average of $2.59 per hour in 2005--nearly a full dollar higher than the cost just six years earlier, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation study examining employers’ payroll and healthcare costs.
Employers offering coverage saw health costs consume an increasing share of their overall payroll costs, with the median cost of health coverage as a share of payroll rising from 8.2 percent in 1999 to 11 percent in 2005. The new analysis also finds a wide range of burden across businesses by occupation and establishment size and shows the increasing burden that healthcare costs place on employers and workers nationally.
These substantial variations have relevance for proposals to expand access to health coverage that would use a funding mechanism for health insurance coverage based on a percentage of worker payroll. Figures for hourly health costs and percentage of payroll costs are substantially larger than those discussed in the context of coverage reforms. Read the analysis.
