A speaker said that women of childbearing age tend to push up healthcare costs, and some employers may boot spouses off their insurance plans for this reason. I don’t see how anyone could get away with that, because there are an awful lot of women in the workforce last time I checked, and if you look at health insurance expenditures, pregnancy-related expenses are relatively far down on the list.
Charts I’ve seen illustrating these expenses very closely follow the top causes of death for people under the age of 65 (with the exception, of course, of childbirth), with cardiovascular disease being #1 by far, followed by cancer, diabetes, car accidents, kidney disease, etc.
For people in their 20s and 30s, it is indeed pregnancy-related expenses for women and accidents for men, but for people in their 50s and 60s? Yep, heart disease, etc.
I was surprised to find out that most Medicaid dollars are spent on the elderly, until it was pointed out to me that this is who foots the bill for a huge percentage of nursing home patients.
I’m not sure about costs or current plans, but booting spouses off insurance is nothing new. At my old job around 2002 we were told that in our new health plan we were getting, if the spouse had a job that provided insurance that we were not allowed to put them on our plan.
Are you even allowed to offer a health insurance plan that does not cover spouses who do not themselves have access to insurance? I ask because I haven’t heard of one, and I’m sure many employers would do so if they could (perhaps if they didn’t have a lot of married employees.)
A nice little benefit for some 2 income families is that they could pick which spouse’s work insurance to purchase and both enroll. Now companies are saying, in effect, “No more. If your spouse can be covered under company “B”, let “B” carry the risk instead of us”. I presume the couple can still choose which poilicy to enroll the kids under, but I haven’t heard any info on that.
It depends on the company’s demographics. The company I work for is 75% women, and 35-40% between ages 21 and 35. Our pregnancy claims against both our medical and disability plans are quite high - easily the highest claim categories.
These are employees, though, not spouses, so eliminating spouse coverage would not be a huge impact on those numbers for us.
Of course a company can offer an insurance plan that does not provide an option for a spouse or dependents. Obamacare has provisions to mandate insurance for employees and dependent children but spousal coverage is not required. Or a company could choose not to offer insurance at all though they might have to pay penalties under Obamacare.
Indeed package delivery giant UPS just announced that they will no longer permit non-union employees to add a spouse to their health insurance if that spouse has a coverage option at his/her employer.
I don’t see how anyone could get away with that, because there are an awful lot of women in the workforce last time I checked, and if you look at health insurance expenditures, pregnancy-related expenses are relatively far down on the list.