"It costs a fabulous amount of money for companies to provide health care benefits for its former employees," explains Alexa Smith, president of the Research Department, New York City. "That's because people are living longer and the diseases which people once died from are now being controlled, but at a huge cost. People are also spending more time in nursing homes and receiving in-home medical care and having meals delivered," all of which contribute to corporations' financial liability.

But how concerned are corporations about long-term coverage care and what are they doing about it, if anything?

Those were two main issues addressed in focus groups involving employee benefits officers of large corporations in Chicago and Philadelphia. The research was conducted in August, 1987, by the Research Department for Nashville-based EQUICOR EQUITABLE HCA Corporation, an employee benefits company that sells group benefits and managed health care products.

EQUICOR is a product of a merger between Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) Health Plans Division and Equitable Group & Health Insurance Co. Like a lot of other insurance companies, says Smith, EQUICOR wanted to know what corporations were thinking about in terms of long-term care coverage, what their needs were and if they were presently thinking of any long-term health insurance products.

Chicago and Philadelphia were chosen as the sites to do the four focus groups - two in each of the cities - because both have a large number of major employers with a substantial number of retirees, says Karen Krett, market research manager at EQUICOR's New York office.

The large corporations represented in the study were involved in a variety of industries and had 1,000 employees or more. The employee benefits officers representing these companies were chosen on the basis of their being the highest ranking officer of this type in their company ...