APM’s ‘Marketplace’ Profiles Tiered Health Insurance Premium System at Wachovia

APM's "Marketplace Morning Report" on Thursday profiled a tiered health insurance premium system used by Wachovia that distributes costs among employees based on salary levels. Under the system, Wachovia, which has about 100,000 employees, places workers into four salary brackets and requires those with the highest salaries to pay the largest share of health insurance premiums. For example, Wachovia employees with annual salaries near $30,000 next year will have health insurance premium rate increases of less than 8%, and workers with annual salaries of $100,000 or more will have premium rate increases of as much as 15%. According to APM, JPMorgan Chase also has implemented a tiered health insurance premium system, but smaller companies "could have a difficult time" with such a system. The APM segment includes comments from a benefits director and a senior vice president at Wachovia; other Wachovia employees; and Will Sneden, a senior health care analyst with Hewitt Associates (Bedrin, "Marketplace Morning Report," APM, 12/9).
The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.