"Every year, we have this discussion: Whose plan is going to be cheaper?" Paredes said. "The costs just keep going up."
All over the region, employees are holding similar discussions as they enroll in company health plans this fall. Health premiums for businesses have risen at a double-digit clip for four straight years, and a similar rise is expected in 2004.
The surge has caused workers to pay, on average, 50 percent more in out-of-pocket expenses since 2000, according to a survey released last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Some companies are denying coverage to employees' spouses if they can get insurance through their employer. Employees now pay as much as 50 percent of drug costs and up to $1,000 for each hospitalization.
The big hikes have helped swell the ranks of the uninsured by 10 percent just in the last two years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These workers delay care and become sicker, eventually adding to the upward spiral of health costs, health experts say.
Benefit cuts are pronounced among money-losing airlines and manufacturing companies. Customer-service agents for US Airways have endured two rounds of health-benefit cuts since September 2002, said Tina Perry, president of Local 13301 of the Communications Workers of America. "We're getting a whole lot less care for a lot more money," she said.
Unions that hold the line on health benefits report that their members are forgoing wage increases. The four-year pact reached last month between General Motors Corp. and its workers held the line on health benefits but included no wage hikes for the first two years.
"Nearly every labor dispute from 2002 on has had to do with health benefits," observed Henry Nicholas, president of District 1199C of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees.
