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U.S. manufacturers who provide health insurance spend an average of $2.38 per worker per hour on healthcare -- more than twice as much as their foreign competitors, an analysis released Tuesday found. . .

But the new analysis suggests that neither lower wages nor higher prices are an option for most companies. Employers can't slash wages fast enough to keep up with rising healthcare costs because of minimum wage laws, union contracts and other factors, said economist Len Nichols, the analysis' author and a policy director for the New America Foundation.

"There's no question that if employers could push this into wages they would," Nichols said. "But every single year, healthcare costs rise faster than productivity and wages," he said. "Thus, they try to push it into prices. But with China and India competing against you, you can't do that." . . .

Nichols found that healthcare costs were outpacing wages and productivity. With stiff global pricing competition, that means healthcare costs have to come out of the bottom line, he said.

"That," he said, helps "explain why so many employers are hyper-focused on health reform this time around compared to 1992-93."

Nichols said his study was prompted by a question from a manufacturer in the Midwest who was shifting his jobs overseas. "My question for you is this," Nichols recalled, "who is going to buy my stuff? If we move jobs overseas, who is going to be able to buy our middle-class stuff."

Link to the analysis: http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/employer_health_costs_global_economy