Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare Launches to Fight Against Rising Costs for Businesses and Employees

A new organization has launched to fight alongside businesses and employees facing rising costs for healthcare.

“Employer-sponsored health coverage is under siege by policies that raise costs on businesses large and small, threaten to undermine a key job recruitment and retention tool, and erode the household buying power of hard-working Kansas employees,” said Andrew Wiens, Executive Director of Kansas Employers for Affordable Healthcare (KEAH). “KEAH will serve as a collective voice for employers to push back against anti-competitive legislation that raises the cost of healthcare for Kansas businesses, employees, and their families.”

Employer-sponsored healthcare benefits support good health among employees and their families by providing preventative care, treatment for illnesses and injuries, and access to prescribed medications. It is no surprise that a recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management shows employers naming health-related benefits as the most important type of benefit an organization can offer its workers.

At the same time, “health benefit costs [are] expected to rise 5.4% in 2023,” and employers should “prepare for continued accelerated cost growth,” according to a recent article from Healthcare Finance News. Many Kansas workers who are covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan have recently emerged from their health insurance open enrollment period and have indeed noticed a bigger dent in their family budgets. Employers, who typically cover the lion’s share of the cost of their employees’ healthcare benefits, face the same cost escalation challenges and are bracing for the impact of future cost hikes.

“In recent years, Kansas businesses have watched their healthcare bills go up while harmful legislation continues to be proposed: implementing budget-busting coverage mandates, increasing red tape, prohibiting cost-saving practices, banning incentives to shop at cheaper providers, and issuing heavy-handed regulations of employers with self-funded health plans,” Wiens said. “KEAH applauds Kansas legislative leadership for committing to 'A Better Way' in their 2023 legislative agenda to ‘protect Kansas consumers and stop new costly mandates that drive up rates.’”

“We’ve dug ourselves quite a hole with healthcare regulations, both at the federal and state levels. While we can’t totally control macroeconomic forces and put a lid on inflation, Kansas employers, small businesses, labor unions, and associations can join KEAH to fight back against price-hiking legislation and regulations. Kansans facing mounting healthcare costs are counting on us to get the job done.”