Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 6, 1994                   TAG: 9401060047
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WORKERS ABSORB INCREASE

The chamber said its annual survey of 1,100 companies that employ a total of 2.3 million workers found they spent $3,504 per employee, or 10.3 percent of payroll, on medical benefits.

That was virtually unchanged from the $3,465 per employee, or 10.4 percent of payroll, they spent in 1991.

Workers themselves had to pay 9 percent more for their health-care coverage in 1992, and many firms also raised their deductibles.

"Employees absorbed 38 percent of the increase in medical insurance costs between 1990 and 1991 and all of the increase in 1992," the chamber said in its annual report on employee benefits.

Still, most of the costs are borne by employers. Workers contributed 1.3 percent of their pay on average toward health insurance.

The chamber said the increase borne by workers was caused by the rising cost of providing health benefits for retirees.

It was "the first time in more than a decade the cost of medical . . . benefits that are not mandated did not increase as a percentage of employers' payrolls," it said.

The chamber's survey is one of the largest business polls of any kind. It has been conducted regularly for 40 years. Some 327 of the 1,100 firms had fewer than 100 employees; 104 had more than 5,000 employees.

President Clinton has proposed requiring most companies to pay no more than 7.9 percent of payroll for his system of universal health coverage. Employers would split the premiums with workers, 80-20.

Ninety-seven percent of the firms surveyed by the chamber indicated they made at least some payment toward employee health insurance. That was down from 98 percent a year earlier.

Twenty-three percent of the companies provided some health benefits for part-timers.

All told, the companies spent 40.2 percent of payroll on benefits, from health, pensions and Social Security to life insurance, vacations and workers' compensation. That worked out to $6.57 an hour, or $13,631 a year, per employee.

The cost of medical benefits has risen almost 23 percent since 1989, when it was $2,853 per employee.

The cost was sharply higher in Northeast states ($4,770) than in the Southeast ($2,791). The cost was $3,925 in the West and $3,012 in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Employers nationwide spent $1.15 trillion on all employee benefits in 1992.