A great article in Newsweek (click here to read it) that talks about a new Census Bureau report (click here to see the PDF report) Detailing “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008”. The news isn’t good for median income trends, people under government-provided healthcare and the decline in people covered under employment-based Healthcare.
From the Newsweek article:
Economists have correctly noted that wages haven’t risen more in this decade in part because companies are paying more for benefits like health insurance. True. But employers have also been passing on rising costs to employees. And according to a new report by Mercer Consulting, companies are planning on doing a lot of that in 2010. If employers simply re-upped existing plans, Mercer’s survey finds, costs would rise by 9 percent. But according to preliminary findings, “respondents plan to shave three percentage points off their annual renewal rates through a variety of cost-saving actions, holding overall cost growth to 5.9 percent next year.” How? The “first line of defense” is “shifting costs to employees.”
Newsweek link Via: this tweet from lateandsoon.
Bonus: click on the photo at the top of the Newsweek article for a look at “Town Hall Face“, a slideshow of faces taken from town hall meetings across the U.S.