While the federal government over uses the ever popular AFFORDABLE, corporate America is quietly, but steadily making health care less and less affordable to working Americans.
The biggest trend today is the high deductible health plan (also prominent in the Affordable Care Act exchanges), but as you can see below, employer subsidies are shrinking and indeed heading to the ultimate gotcha, the fixed dollar subsidy that either does not increase or increases at a rate less than the plan’s health care inflation rate.
From the 2013 Aon Hewitt Health Care Survey
■■ Only 2% of employers today provide employees with a fixed-dollar subsidy to purchase health coverage; however, 28% of employers expect to move to a defined contribution approach over the next three to five years.
■■ Employers continue to subsidize employees at a higher level than dependents, holding steady at an 80% subsidy for employee coverage and 75% for dependent coverage. However, additional cost shifting is expected to reduce subsidy levels to 75% for employees and 70% for dependents in the next three to five years.
Making health care affordable is focused on premiums rather than on the cost of health care and the out-of-pocket cost to the insured.
➡️➡️ By 2020, about 90 percent of American workers who now receive health insurance through their employers will be shifted to government exchanges created by the health law, according to a projection by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm serving the financial industry.
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