Salt Lake Chamber Launces Website to Help Businesses With Rising Heath Care Costs

(KCPW News) The Salt Lake Chamber is helping businesses with the rising cost of health care.  Over the past year, the chamber has been building a website to help businesses examine health care costs and compare what other businesses have done to save money. Rich McKeown, president and CEO of Leavitt Partners and chair of the Salt Lake Chamber Health System Reform Task Force, says employers are faced with tough choices when it comes to health care.

“CEOs across our county are tearing their hair at the escalating cost of health care,” McKeown said. “It is compounding itself in an exponential way and the impact of it is that it erodes the ability of employers to give raises to deserving employees to the extent that they would like to because those monies are being diverted into healthcare.”

The new website is for all employers’ regardless of size or health care knowledge. It addresses twelve different topics that fall under major categories that allow business executives to examine ways to deal with annual cost increases. Donna Milavetz, CEO of OnSite Care, says the site is a way for employer’s to become engaged in how they use health care.

“This toolbox is a mechanism to give employers the ability to start having those more advanced conversations about what benefit design would look like,” Milavetz said.  “When you turn this lever on verses this lever off in terms of plan design are employees going to react to this change in my benefit design?”

A link to the new website can be found here: www.slchamber.com/toolbox