In keeping with the Friends and family Foundation as well as the Well-being Analysis & Educational Trust, overall rates paid by employer and employee combined to the past calendar year only rose an average of 3% for families. However, the share paid by the worker alone rose by almost 17% and this trend is expected to continue.

Health care costs are expected to increase between 9% and 14% to the coming 12 months. In order to lessen that increase, 60% of employers plan to pass the expenditures on to their workers. These charges will include higher premiums, elevated from pocket costs and bigger deductibles. This cost saving measure will result in bringing the percentage down to six.

Other employers, approximately 50%, plan to encourage their employees to improve their overall health by adding overall health management and wellness programs. Employers will also add incentives like gift cards or lower premiums if employees participate in wellness assessment surveys or if they meet their ideal biometrics, such as blood pressure and body mass index. Focusing on staying healthy is usually a great way to lower overall health care expenses.

The changes that will alter the overall health care market the most won’t kick in until 2014, giving employers time to figure out how they are going to deal with the changes. Economist, Paul Fronstin, of the nonprofit Employee Benefits Study Institute states, For that most part, the plans don’t know what they’re going to be doing. It is really just too soon.”

There are some mandates that take effect this year that employers will be required to comply with but there is a grandfather clause to some of the new mandates. If employers don’t make any changes to their plans or switch insurance plan carriers, they do not have to offer any additional benefits like free preventive services. Required mandates include elimination of lifetime maximums on wellbeing benefits and allowing adult children up to age 26 to remain on their parent’s coverage. Estimates are that any increase in rates due for the new mandates will be less than two percent.

Shifts in the makeup of a large company’s work force can affect their premiums. Claxton states, A company will look at, for instance, are they going to be hiring or downsizing? Do they have a bunch of early retirees who are going to move from one plan to another? Any size company will have some type of issue that will affect their premiums.

Predictions of ever increasing charges for employees are based on past trends. Employers will need time to analyze the effects of the new well-being care provisions before a true picture can emerge of what the prices will be.

There seems to be a common trend among medical device manufacturers in 2012 and that seems to be portability. The concept that one should no longer be glued to a certain location and that they can freely move about while at the same time having access for the necessary medical devices that they need. Although some of these devices have been around for many years there have been significant changes not only in their functionality but also their usefulness in the past year that they deserve mentioning as one of the top three innovative medical devices in 2012.

The first device that is the most innovative and useful is often a nebulizer. A nebulizer is a medical and well being product that has been used for over hundred years as a way of transforming respiratory medication from liquid form into vapor form so that it can be breathed in through the lungs. This in turn will allow it to be absorbed far more quickly into the body than by simply ingesting it the old fashioned way. Those that are suffering from wellness conditions like asthma and COPD find great comfort in such a device to help them relieve their symptoms and live a more normal life.

The second device that is truly innovative in 2012 is the artificial heart. Truly one of the most amazing discoveries in well-being for years the artificial heart has been able to help hundreds of thousands of individuals suffering from various heart conditions including congenital heart failure and many others. Due for the recent advancement in technology the product has been able to overcome many of the obstacles that it faced in prior years. Although the actual procedure to implant the heart is extremely complicated and difficult, however when done by a skilled surgeon it has the ability to truly save a person’s life and enable them to live a more normal life had they not gotten the implant.

The third most innovative device for that 12 months is actually a device that is used by dentists. It is known as the CAD/CAM device and essentially what it does is that it takes a 3-D image of the contours of the teeth and from that it electronically is able to carve out a brand new tooth from ceramic compounds. Once the tooth is carved out it is then implanted by the dentist and because it was made with enhanced digital imaging technology it is surely an exact fit into the groves of where the bite occurs with the other health teeth. Although quite expensive it is however truly a breakthrough in the field of dentistry because it opens the door to new partnerships between technology and dentistry and allows for better patient care in the process.

These products have truly broken ground and they will continue to do so. As the technology advances there will be more and more introductions of products that can not only satisfy the desire for more portability but still deliver the accuracy and dependability that is so needed by overall health care professionals and individuals.