Content area
Full Text
Average bump of 7.2% seen in 2012 for companies here
Some Orange County businesses have been breathing a sigh of relief as they consider next year's budgets for healthcare.
"We were expecting higher," said Dan Nichols, human resources consultant for Santa Ana nonprofit Habitat for Humanity Orange County, which will pay an average of 4% more in premiums for its workers' healthcare coverage in 2012.
Nichols said that Habitat saw a premium increase of 16% this year.
Habitat, which has 54 workers, offers a large range of plans to its workers. Aetna Inc. of Hartford, Conn., and Oakland-based nonprofit Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in Orange County - combine to offer its employees some 20 options.
Workers can choose "plans with a higher deductible (or) a lower deductible," among other things, he said.
Habitat isn't alone when it comes to getting a relative break on healthcare costs in 2012.
Aon Hewitt Inc., a Chicago-based human resources consulting company, recently released a study showing that the increase that employers in Orange County will pay toward health insurance premiums for their workers is expected to average 7.2%, or about $800 apiece, in 2012.
That would...