Tracking health care costs: long-predicted upturn appears.
After three years of anticipation, health care cost trends have taken an upward turn.  In employment-based insurance, premium increases for 1999 were in the 5 percent range, up from 3 percent for 1998.  The rate of increase in underlying costs of private insurance--lagged by one year--also rose by approximately 2 percentage points.  Many had expected a sharper upturn in premium increases than underlying cost increases.  This would have heralded a turn in the insurance underwriting cycle, which has not yet occurred. This Issue Brief tracks the rate of growth of health care costs and the experience with premiums for employment-based health insurance and discusses the impact of these trends on consumers.
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Ginsburg
D005544:Forecasting; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000191:economics / Q000639:trends; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D014481:United States