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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (June 3, 1998)
Health News Health coverage prices may rise Insurance companies and HMOs will pass their increased costs to consumers, experts say By John Hendren The Associated Press NEW YORK — Costly health care mergers, “lifestyle” drugs like Viagra and an aging population are expected to lead to double-dig it increases in health care costs next year. Many health insurance compa nies lost money last year, and they are going to be less willing to hold the line on rates for 1999, analysts say. Traditional plans that let the pa tient choose the doctor will raise costs the most — 12 percent to 15 percent, according to health care consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide. Health maintenance organizations will raise prices 5 percent to 7 percent. Prescription drug plans in which pharmacies charge insurers directly will cost 15 percent to 22 percent more. Analysts say employers will simply pass on the added costs to employees. For many workers, that probably means health plans that offer fewer choices. Or it could mean higher copayments, premiums and deductibles. “This is the final betrayal of the HMO promise,” said Jamie Court of the Santa Monica, Calif., group Consumers for Quality Care. “HMOs basically can’t be trusted to manage your care or manage your bills.” Watson Wyatt Worldwide is sued its estimate this week based on an informal survey of 445 exec utives who buy health care cover age in companies with more than 500 employees in large metropoli tan areas. Only 49 percent of insurance plans made money last year, ac cording to researcher InterStudy Publications. “The insurance companies and HMOs have underestimated the rate of increase in the cost of pro viding managed care,” said John Salek, a vice president and health care analyst at REL Consultancy Group. “I think a lot of these insur ers just lowballed the price to get marketshare.” At the same time, insurers such as Aetna U.S. Healthcare and United Healthcare are coping with expensive mergers. Consumers are pressuring companies to cover new “lifestyle" drugs such as the $10-a-pill impotence tablet Viagra and the newly approved weight loss drug Meridia. Pharmaceutical companies are developing higher priced drugs. And the baby boom generation is aging, developing more ailments. Insurers say they have little choice but to raise rates. Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest HMO, has already told em ployers it will seek increases of up to 12 percent. Kaiser is making up for small increases in recent years, spokeswoman Beverly Hayon said. Smokers more prone to hearing loss However, more studies are needed to determine if there is a cause-and effect relationship By Debra Hale Shelton The Associated Press CHICAGO — Add age-related hearing loss to the list of health problems cigarette smokers are more likely to face. A five-year study of 3,753 mid dle-age and older people found that smokers are 1.7 times as like ly to have age-related hearing loss than nonsmokers. Lead Researcher Karen Cruick shanks, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sci ences at the University of Wis consin Medical School in Madi son, said the findings suggest an association between smoking and hearing loss but more study is needed to determine if a direct cause-and-effect relationship ex ists. Hearing loss may be a coinci dence, Cruickshanks said Mon day. “It’s most likely that there are many factors that play a role in the age-related loss of hearing, and possibly smoking is one of them,” she said. The National Institute on Ag ing funded the study, published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, started in 1993, took place in Beaver Dam, Wis., using participants from a large population-based study on vision and factors that might affect vi sion loss. Participants were ages 48 to 92. Cool Courses For Summer... 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