What are some of the factors behind the rising costs of health care?
The obvious factor is that we’re all getting older, and the older we get, the greater the need for health care. These needs are being filled with wonderful new advancements in medical technology and pharmaceuticals, but each of these advancements, generally speaking, is more expensive than what it replaced. Other factors that contribute to the rising costs of health care are the impact of the uninsured and underinsured, the cost of malpractice insurance, hospitals and physicians practicing medicine defensively, and inefficiencies in the health care system. The lifestyle choices that we make like sedentary lifestyles, poor diets, smoking, not wearing seatbelts and drinking too much also play a large role in the escalating costs. What strategies can be implemented by businesses to help control health insurance costs? Businesses have to start looking beyond just cost shifting to employees and downsizing benefits. They have to start addressing and, more importantly, impacting how their emp
