Is anyone else noticing this trend?

I am an instructor at a university in the midwest and just found out that our health insurance premiums for this next year may go up 30% compared to last year! I am furious! What that equates to is an additional $75-$90 per month per employee!

Our health insurance is through Blue Cross/Blue Shield and they have told us that they have had "higher than normal claims" during the past three months. (Maybe hurricane related, I do not know.)

This on top of our state telling us we are not getting our annual 3% raise.

Anyone else seeing this occurring?

:mad: :mad: :mad:

and our hmo has been going up a LOT every year for the past three years. We are getting a raise but they sneakily increased the school day so it really doesn't count.

...and our rates went up 30% last year and have gone up an additional 30% this year as well. 60 friggin percent in 2 years!! I had to drop my coverage thru the college.

The company he works for offers domestic partner benefits which is wonderful!! I lucked out because his coverage is far better with much smaller co-pays.

It goes up every single damn bill.

And we only have a catastrophic policy we can't use -- or hope never to use. I pay for doctor visits out of pocket.

Health care is in a crisis.

Something that my wife and I will seriously discuss tonight.

Not only did I have to pay my own bills, but I had to pay the insurance company too. I often wondered if I ever met the deductible and had to use it if they would refuse to renew. I'll be they do or make the premium so high it's unaffordable.

conditions I am sure we are uninsurable anywhere else.

We just pay for it. And cuss. We drink a lot of beer, too.

was able to get Medicare. I think they pull you in with a low initial price then they start raising the premium by leaps and bounds, not just small increments but doubling the premium almost and then almost redoubling it again within a year.

I notice that my medigap policy that compliments my Medicare (not Blue Cross this time) seems to be attempting to do the same thing. We really need universal health care for all. I wish employers would realize what a savings it would be all around to cut out the for profit health plans and do what they do in Canada.

November is when my hubby gets his raise (3 or 4%) and the following May we usually see a BCBS rate hike. So not much is left of the raise. It's like pedaling backwards. Welcome to George Bush's America.

30% increase in healt care costs. They might as well have not even given us the pay raise because it didn't off set any costs at all!

I'll keep an eye out during our "open" enrollment period. They don't usually change the prices at any other time. I believe our next "open" period is in January/February.

Just learned yesterday that our hmo is raising our premiums by $7000.00.Were a small company of a dozen employees.And thus more money taken from our pay or no health insurance at all.:mad:

Pay more and get less in the land of "self responsiblity" republican leadership.

nurse in Minnesota and also am covered by BCBS. In the hospital/clinic system I work for BCBS coverage is going up about 30% also, but what is very interesting to note is that the same coverage is offered by the company my partner works for at about i/3rd the cost! No, he is not an exec so this is not a perk. This coverage thankfully also has an additional clause allowing for domestic partner (and any children whether they are his, mine or ours).The difference- my company is part of an American owned Hospital corporation and his company is European based and owned.

No one is going to have health care in this country if this keeps up. People and Companies cannot sustain the high cost of health-care anymore, but maybe that's the goal? :shrug: Healthier will be for the rich only with the middle class and poor left to drop dead.
Maybe they're trying to, "decrease the surplus population", as the eminent Mr. Scrooge used to say.

It's been jumping dramatically each year since Bush took office, and this is killing businesses. They were blaming malpractice suits, but after 9-11 they blamed 9-11 for a while. Either way, it's costing businesses and employees a lot of spending power.

What this broker says is that insurance companies sell their policies to reinsurers, who have the capital to cover policies. There are only about five of these in the world, and they are very wealthy, obviously. After 9-11, though, they took a major capital hit, losing something like two-thirds of their capital in one event. So they've been trying to rebuild this capital in a very short time, and are raising insurance rates of all types to make up this capital. The last two hurricane seasons have been bad on them, too, so they are not accruing capital as fast as they had planned, so prices are still going up.

Government is letting it happen because a lot of our economy relies on the insurance industry financing rebuilding after emergencies, and no one wants these companies to collapse.

No idea if this is true, it's just what this man explained to me.

that it's malpractice insurance that is driving the cost up but that just isn't true. The Insurance Companies have a license to steal under the BFEE and they're taking full advantage of it. If the AMA would police their Doctors a little better there wouldn't BE as many malpractice suits either, but they're not about to cull out the bad eggs, they're dollar driven as well. Bastards! :grr:

That's just a gimic they sell the less informed to get their blood boiling. They know it isn't true.

I spent most of my life as an underwriter and handled reinsurance as part of the job, although I have been out of it for a while.

Insurance companies have gone bankrupt after major disasters like the Chicago fire and San Francisco earthquake, so partly due to state regulation and partly due to sensible management, they sell a large part of their risk to the reinsurers, most of it through what are called treaties.

Most of the the risk has traditonally been held by London companies and they have always set the rates, although othe European companies have stepped in lately. They were able to keep rates low for several reason-- mostly because they could profit from other business around the world, and partly because they made a lot of money with the dollars they got.

A number of things have happened over the years, not the least of which is the enormous values they are dealing with now. Used to be a house would burn down costing $85,000, but now the same house costs them $350,000. An oil tanker would sink, costing them a few million, now it's a few hundred million. Medical costs have skyrocketed everywhere, particularly in the US. And the number of claims has risen worldwide. The tsunami, just for one, cost them a small fortune, and they don't know yet what the hurricanes will cost.

So, the worldwide capital pool has shrunk just when the exposure has risen dramatically and the risk of major catastrophes is larger.

Now, having been in the business for a long time, I can tell you that insurance companies are no angels, but they are also subject to many forces they can't control. And, just like any other companies, they have to show a profit or they will fold.

Our COLA won't be announced until 10/14, but it won't be over 3.5% (what federal employees will receive; unless you are SES, congressperson, etc) and could be as little as 1.1% (what SS recepients are to receive).

My BCBS premium is slated to increase by at least 10%.

One of the reasons I left my job 5 years ago was that I was basically taking a pay cut every year, due to increasing insurance costs. At my current job, they shopped around for a new provider with slightly less attractive coverage to keep us from having to pay higher premiums.

but it has to be better than NO medical care or medical care that is going to bankrupt you if you ever do get sick. Maybe that's why they changed the bankruptcy laws, they KNOW what's coming down the line and they don't want to give people any chance of NOT paying them in full, whatever the cost. Rotten bastards, this country is going to hell in a hand basket with it's "market driven" system. Capitalism was good once, but it's gone on far too long without decent controls in place. It's broke, but the Cons surely don't want to fix it. Bill Frist might lose a million or two.

only thing the future holds in the present form is higher premiums, larger copays, hugh deductibles and less and less overall coverage. Why on earth do we all individually buy our own car insurance, home owner's insurance, life insurance, but we can only get health insurance at the employer. Back in the old days everyone had plenty of health insurance, but now in the age of high profits more and more people are losing their insurance every day. Pretty darn soon many middle class employees will have to drop their coverage as employers hand down the un-affordable increased cost to them. We are in a lose, lose position and someone needs to take action now before we all lose the ability to have coverage. The market thinks we will pay anything just to have coverage, but we can't.