If you're one of the majority of health-care consumers who purchase insurance through your employer, you know that premium increases and rising out-of-pocket costs aren't confined to the health-care exchanges. Rising medical costs are also alive and well in the employer-sponsored insurance market.
According to the Medical Cost Trend report released today from PwC's Health Research Institute, employers and insurers are expecting a 6 percent increase in healthcare costs in 2019, in line with the 5.5 percent to 5.7 percent increases seen in the past five years. In most cases at least part of those costs are passed onto employees.
At first glance the numbers look like good news. Health care costs aren't rising at a faster rate than years past, signaling a stabilizing in costs compared to the runaway double digit increases we saw in the early 2000s.
