MEDICAL COSTS A BIGGER WORRY THAN FOREIGN COMPETITION

Nearly two-thirds of top United States executives identify rising medical benefit costs as the primary issue their company faces in the 1990s, overshadowing foreign competition by a nearly five-to-one margin, according to a report by the Watt Company. Medical benefits cost amounted to an average of 26 percent of corporate net income last year, according to another study by A. Foster Higgins & Co. -PATHNAME- /usr/local/etc/httpd/plweb/DBGROUPS/paper/database/tape/91/mar/week10/fside25.