Health PlaNET

Date: Oct. 29, 1999
Time: 8:48 am

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill making it a federal crime for doctors to prescribe drugs to help terminally ill patients end their lives. However, the bill differentiates between the use of prescription drugs to control pain and the use of these medications to accelerate death.

Alleviating pain or discomfort through the use of controlled substances is a "legitimate medical purpose" even if it increases the risk of death. But if the physician prescribes drugs to cause a death he or she could get 20 years in prison.

A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate but has not yet reached the floor. The Justice Department has said that the House bill will "interfere with state policy-making in a particularly heavy-handed way."

- Source: New York Times, Oct. 28

US health benefit costs hit small businesses hard

A new annual employer health benefits tracking survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET)

reveals that US health insurance premiums rose faster than in previous years - although still relatively modestly - but hit small businesses especially hard.

The survey found that health insurance premiums increased 4.8% from 1998 to 1999. While still a relatively modest increase compared with the past era of double-digit health cost increases, this is the biggest annual increase since 1994 and is more than double the economy-wide inflation rate of 2.1%. Small businesses, defined as firms with 3 to 199 workers, experienced substantially higher premium increases than larger businesses, defined as firms with 200 or more workers (6.9% compared to 4.1%). The smallest of firms, those with 3 to 9 workers, reported the highest increase in premiums (9.2%).

The survey found little change over the last 2 years in the percentage of employers offering coverage to their workers. While virtually all large employers continue to offer coverage, just 60% of small businesses do so. The number of uninsured Americans continues to grow, to 44.3 million, according to recently released Census Bureau figures, and the availability of employer health coverage shows no signs of increasing.

Also, more employers are taking actions to control the cost of retiree health insurance. Of the 41% of large firms that offered retiree health coverage in 1999, 35% report capping the maximum amount they contribute to a retiree's health plan within the last 2 years. Just 8% of firms with fewer than 200 workers provide retiree health benefits.

"Premium increases are hitting the smallest of businesses the hardest, most of whom already have a difficult time affording health insurance. These increases will make it even harder for small businesses to provide health insurance for their employees in the future," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Survey results are based on a national random sample of 1939 telephone interviews with human resource and benefit administrators in firms with 3 to 5000 or more workers; it was conducted from February to June, 1999. An additional 755 firms were interviewed solely to determine whether they offered health insurance coverage to their workers. The sample was drawn from the Dun & Bradstreet list of the nation's private and public employers with three or more workers. The overall response rate was 60%. The study's margin of error is +/- 3%.

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