According to a report by Aon Consulting Worldwide, health care costs are expected to increase on average 10.6 percent in 2009. Even though the projection outpaces inflation, it is less than previous year’s increases.

Aon Consulting surveyed more than 70 leading health care insurers, representing more than 100 million insured individuals. The 10.6 percent projection represents the lowest trend rate increase since the study began in 2001 when the projection was 15 percent, and is slightly lower than one year ago when the projection was 10.9 percent.

According to the AP/Baltimore Sun, costs continue to rise to keep pace with increasing patient demand for services, necessities for an aging US population and higher prescription drug and technology costs. However, the percentage rate of increases for health care costs has had a downward trend since 2001 due to a number of factors, including behavioral changes by providers, cost-savings programs that encourage the use of generic drugs over brand-name, and the implementation of wellness and prevention programs by insurers.

Bill Sharon, senior vice president with Aon Consulting and director of the study, attributes the decrease in the health care costs trend to more employers and employees taking advantage of wellness, health promotion and consumer driven programs.

NSBA has developed a broad, comprehensive proposal to reform our nation’s health care system that focuses on reducing health care costs while improving quality, bringing about a fair sharing of health care costs, and focusing on the empowerment and responsibility of individual health care consumers. Establishing wellness and prevention programs is a piece to the proposal that NSBA has put forth. While the declining projections in health care costs may reflect recent efforts to curb increasing costs in the health care system, more must be done to truly reform the health care system for small businesses to have access to quality, affordable health insurance.