Nonprofits Control Increases in Health Care Premiums with Cost Shifting to Employees

July 6, 2010 - PRLog -- REDMOND, WA - While nonprofits overall held organization-paid health care premium increases to single digits at the beginning of 2010, their employees were paying more for their coverage, with higher premium requirements, higher annual deductibles, higher co-payments, and even less extensive coverage.

A new report by Abbott, Langer Association Surveys, Inc., entitled 2010 Benefits in Nonprofit Organizations, Tenth Edition, provides current data on health plan costs and benefit practices in nonprofit organizations that can be used to help evaluate benefit program design strategies. Released July 1, 2010, it covers specific types of benefits offered January 1, 2010, by a sample of 116 nonprofit organizations of varied sizes with a total of over 21,000 employees. Over half of the responding organizations had fewer than 50 employees; 17 percent had 50 to 99, and 22 percent had 100 to 499; the remaining 8 percent employed 500 or more. One hundred eighty-one medical plans covering over 15,000 nonprofit employees across the United States were reviewed, along with 115 dental plans.

Details on medical, vision, dental, disability, and life insurance, along with retirement plans, are presented, as well as information on paid leave and executive perquisites.

The 2010 findings include:

   * 57% of respondents offering medical benefits have a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan as the primary medical plan.
         o The average employee cost for employee-only coverage is $76 per month.
         o The average employer cost for employee-only coverage is $418 per month – 85% of the total premium cost.
         o Average cost of the premium went up 14% for employees and dropped by 2% for employers from 2009 to 2010.
   * Employers paid an average of 64% of the PPO premium for family coverage in 2010 – they paid 69% of the cost in 2009.
   * 57% of respondents offered provisions to opt out of medical coverage and 35% provided some reimbursement for doing so;
   * While 96% offer a retirement plan, only 14% are defined benefit plans; the most common type is a 403(b) plan.
   * While 76% offer traditional leave plans typically consisting of sick days, vacation, bereavement leave, personal leave, and floating holidays, the remaining 24% combine all or part of paid leave into a pool (Paid Time Off or PTO plans), granting an average of nearly 23 days of paid leave after one year of employment; the average granted at 10 years of service is 30.6days.
   * 87% offer dental plans, with Dental PPOs as the most common type of plan.
   * Basic life insurance is provided by 88% of respondents and 75% offer a long-term disability plan.

Copies of the report are available at: http://www.abbott-langer.com.

A companion Abbott, Langer Association Surveys, Inc., report, the 2010 Health Care Benefits Benchmarking Survey, compares health care plans, medical insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance offered by nonprofit organizations, government entities, privately owned for-profit, and publicly owned for-profit organizations. Published in April 2010, it is also available for purchase at: http://www.abbott-langer.com.

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About Abbott, Langer Association Surveys:

Since 1967, Abbott, Langer has provided a wide variety of compensation and benefit survey reports, with a particular focus on the nonprofit and manufacturing sectors. Now operating under license with ERI Economic Research Institute (http://www.erieri.com), Abbott, Langer uses ERI's patented online survey capabilities to produce reports used by thousands of customers for salary and benefit planning and other HR management decision-making. Users are diverse organizations that vary in size from extremely small to over $4 billion in annual sales volume, and include firms that operate locally, regionally, nationally, and even internationally. Please call 877-210-6563 or visit www.abbott-langer.com for more information and a complete list of available surveys.