Poll: Workers To Pay More For Health Care

NEW YORK — The nation's employers are struggling with close to double-digit increases in health-care costs in 2006, and consequently will be shifting more of that burden to their employees, according to a new survey of more than 1,800 firms.

The preliminary survey, released yesterday by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, found that employers anticipate an almost 10 percent increase in health-care costs next year, about three times the rate of general inflation, if they leave benefits unchanged.

But companies that were polled in the survey — both those that purchase insurance and firms that are self-insured — are only earmarking an average increase of 6.4 percent in their spending. That will mark the third consecutive year that employers are seeing their actual health-care costs slow as they pass on more of the costs to their workers.

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Source: Associated Press