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November 28, 2016 at 12:28 PM
Rising health care costs may hurt sales of some insurance products, and help sales of others.
Related: What benefits do Trump and Clinton offer?
Analysts at the Washington-based Employee Benefit Research Institute and Washington-based Greenwald & Associates have reported that finding in a summary of results from a survey of about 1,500 U.S. workers ages 21 through 64.
Survey teams interviewed the participants in June.
About 21 percent of the workers who reported facing a health cost burden increase said they had to drop some insurance products other than major medical coverage this year. That’s up from 15 percent last year.
But the percentage who said they bought “additional insurance to help with expenses” increased to 11 percent, from 5 percent.
EBRI and Greenwald conducted the survey to analyze the overall performance of the U.S. health benefits system.
The analysts found signs that Affordable Care Act changes, a rebound in the economy or both may have reduced the health care cost burden on workers between 2006 and 2015, but that improvements may have stalled this year.
In 2015, for example, just 50 percent of the privately insured adults reported an increase in either their health insurance premiums or the amounts they spent on deductibles, co-payments and coinsurance.
