How fast is the price

How fast is the price of employer provided health insurance rising?

It rose 13.9% last year and should rise 11.2% this year.

It's rising five times the rate of growth in wages and prices.

See this story by Albert B. Crenshaw in today's Washington Post: "Health Insurance Premiums See Double-Digit Increase".

And the percentage of people getting health insurance through their employers is dropping:

"The percentage of all workers who have health insurance through their employers continues to slip, with 5 million fewer jobs offering health insurance now than in 2001, Kaiser said. Although this year's decline was slight -- to 61 percent from 62 percent in 2003 -- the drop from the peak of 65 percent in 2001 is "significant," Kaiser said. The share of workers at small firms -- those with three to 199 workers -- getting health insurance declined to 50 percent this year from 58 percent in 2001."

The story suggests that workers only pay part of the cost of coverage under the employer provided plans (it reports that this "share" has remained fairly constant since 1988 - although the story says the share is almost 30%, the examples it reports suggest this is the case for family coverage, but not for single worker coverage):

"Among all plans, workers on average pay $2,661 of the $9,950 annual cost for family coverage and $558 of the $3,695 [for a single worker - Ben]..."

As Arnold Kling points out, this ignores the fact that insurance is part of a total compensation package and that, if employers are ostensibly paying for insurance coverage in one part, they may not be paying as much as they otherwise would have in other parts (wages, working conditions, etc.) :

"If employers bear the cost of health insurance, then I'm the Easter Bunny. It is fairy-tale economics to believe that "nice" employers give away health insurance, while "mean" employers withhold it. In reality, employers compensate their employees using a combination of cash and non-cash benefits. Workers bear the cost of health insurance.

The right way to think about health insurance is not as something that employers provide but as something that employers sell to their employees. Your employer is an intermediary between you and the insurance company. Step one, your employer company decides how much to pay for your labor. Step two, the company takes some of that pay and makes you buy health insurance with it..."

See "Middle Man Mess". If the cost is rising faster than 10% a year, and the employee "share" is remaining constant at 30%, either (a) employee compensation is rising overall due to rising insurance costs, or (b) some other component(s) of employee compensation is(are) falling, or (c) some other component(s) are rising, but less rapidly than the insurance component.