This month, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association presents its 2014 Health Benefits Survey in the pages of New Jersey Business magazine. This cover story, based on the responses of more than 580 association member companies, reveals that the overwhelming majority of participants continue to offer health insurance coverage to their employees, even though costs continue to increase. 

Compiled with the assistance of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll, the major findings reveal that 87 percent of companies continue to offer insurance, while 85 percent report seeing healthcare cost increases. The average annual cost of coverage for an employee-only plan is $7,416 per worker. The average cost of a parent and child plan is $11,352, while a husband and wife plan is $15,660. Meanwhile, the average cost of a family plan is $19,116.

Regarding cost increases, small employers – those with 1-24 workers – reported the highest rate of increase at 24 percent; 25-49 workers, a 16 percent increase; 50-99 workers, 13 percent; 100-249 workers, 8 percent; and 250-plus workers, 7 percent.

The survey report offers additional information on what employers are doing to keep costs down and where healthcare costs are heading in the future in the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s full implementation. The article is a must read for our business subscribers in terms of where they stand in comparison to their peers, and what they may consider implementing to keep costs down.

Moving forward, we present “Commercial Litigation Concerns”, a feature story written by Managing Editor George Saliba, which explains that even when a business does everything in its power to prevent lawsuits, there are those “Machiavellian companies and persons” who can bring a company into the throes of costly and extensive litigation battles. The story offers advice on how deal with lawsuits, as well as mediation and arbitration. It also looks at the possibility of changing the way civil suits against businesses are heard due to the work of the New Jersey Supreme Court Working Group on Business Litigation. This entity is advocating the designation of specific judges within vicinages to preside over commercial litigation cases on a routine basis.

We see how New Jersey’s institutions of higher education are expanding to the four corners of the globe and attracting foreign students to the state with Assistant Editor Anthony Bucci’s article “Colleges and Universities Go International.” In this feature, we literally get an education on how these institutions’ international satellite campuses and study abroad and exchange programs are preparing everyone for today’s global economy.