Domestic Partners And Benefits

7 Pages 1642 Words

nefits to their employees. Fears of numerous and costly HIV and AIDS claims prevented many organizations from considering such a bold move. Even insurers were uneasy. The few insurance companies that would add these types of benefits to a policy added surcharges in anticipation of excessively high claims (University of Iowa 4). Another area of anticipated costs was utilization of the benefits. “Early estimates from the Employee Benefits Research Institute indicated that three to four percent of the workforce would use the benefits” (Forman 2). These projections indicate that insurance programs would surely realize a significant increase in administrative costs due to the greater number of program participants.
Despite the concerns with costs, companies slowly began offering domestic partner benefits in an effort to meet the needs of a changing workforce. Because of this, today’s employers have the benefit of data gathered over the last 15 years that has proven that the initial cost concerns were unfounded. There has been no evidence of extremely large HIV or AIDS related claims. In fact, research fr...