The removal of the maximum caps on coverage for lifetime medical expenses and on individual procedures under ObamaCare won’t come for free. In the case of Serigraph, the projected extra expenditures have been reflected in our premium for catastrophic medical events, called stop-loss insurance. For stop-loss coverage of occurences of more than $200,000 per person, the company paid a premium of $229,000 in 2010. It will jump 17% to $267,000 in 2011. Some of the increase can be attributed to the current level of inflation in health care, about 6% to 7%. But other factors stayedd constant. Our plan membership was about the same from year to year. And our experience for medical claims was about average last year in terms of large cases. So, the only real explanation for the spike in premium dollars is the projected extra costs anticpated by our insurer due to the ObamaCare mandates on removal of maximums. Our total health care bill is about $4 million, so the new law means about an extra 1% in annual costs. Adding a dozen 19-25-year-oldfs to our plan under the new law put another half percent on our bill. As some experts predicted, those two mandates have added a toal of about 1 1/2% to this companby’s health care bill. My guess is that it wil run about the same across the country.
