Though employees will see their health insurance premiums increase 6.5 percent next year, employers will take a bigger hit, eight percent, according to a new Mercer Inc. study, and confirmed by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this week.
Though healthcare costs are rising more slowly than in other years, they’re still going up. And they’re still double what they were in 2002, Jeffrey Young noted.
Early responses from a survey conducted by Mercer Inc., the New York-based employee and benefits consulting firm, indicate that employers expect premium increases of about eight percent in 2013, Mercer said Tuesday. But more employers are no longer offering health insurance to their employees.
"Shifting costs to employees is not going to impact your trend of rising health costs," Renee Frisch, a Mercer senior consultant said. "For years, employers have been looking at other ways to mitigate the trend. But at the end of the day, if they need short-term cost savings, the fastest way is to increase co-pays or increase deductibles."
Mercer released its preliminary survey results the same day the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in California, in cooperation with the Chicago-based Health Research and Educational Trust, released its report on the state of employer health benefits.
More than 149 million Americans receive their health benefits through their employers, Kaiser reported.
But there is some good news. Federal health officials said Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act has saved consumers $2.1 billion since this time last year on their insurance premiums, according to Elise Viebeck.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that the savings came from rules within the healthcare law that prevent insurers from raising rates "with no accountability or transparency.”
"Thanks to the law, our health care system is more transparent and more competitive, and that’s saving Americans real money,” Sebelius added in a statement.
In its report, HHS said that insurers will rebate roughly $1.1 billion to policyholders as a result of the 80/20 rule and that the rebates will average $151.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
