Just How Much Do Hidden Health Care Costs Cost Americans?

Most of us have no idea how much our employers contribute to the costs of our health insurance to begin with, so it’s no surprise that we don’t know how much more they end up paying on our behalf each year. If you wanted to get people immediately outraged at the costs of care in this country, all you’d need to do is make the employee foot the entire bill. Employers know this, though, so they continue to compete for employees by absorbing the rising costs of insurance coverage rather than passing them on to employees through higher premiums and increased co-payments. Please don’t think, however, that employers are picking up the tab out of the kindness of their hearts. On the contrary, what they’re doing is passing the costs on to employees ever so subtly, by giving them smaller and less frequent increases in pay. It’s harder to miss the money you never laid your hands on in the first place. But what if that money didn’t go to health care? What if your paycheck got a little bit bigger? What could you have done with that money last year? RAND has put together a striking info-graphic showing just how much hidden increases in the cost of health care are costing Americans.