Expect To Pay More For Your Employer-Sponsored Health Care Next Year – Kaiser Health News

2013

It’s called cost-shifting; get used to it. If you ask most people what portion of their health care they pay, they don’t know. Those who take a guess may say 20% or 30% reflecting the portion of the premium they pay. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg and only if you have no medical bills. For many workers the real cost-sharing is their total out-of-pocket costs; both premiums and deductibles and coinsurance. When you add it all up the average person can pay 50% more of typical costs in a year. Of course, the larger the bills the lower the overall percentage.

The more visible cost-sharing in terms of premiums is taking a back seat to higher out-of-pocket costs which has two logical points going for it. First, the users of health care pay more than non-users and second, people may think twice about indiscriminate use of health care if it’s coming from their pocket; at least that’s the reasoning. And just for the record, this holds true for Obamacare exchange plans just like employer plans.

Obamacare are didn’t cause this, but it sure accelerated it and gave employers cover for more and more bold action.  The changes coming for health care may save employers money in the short run, but at the same time higher out-of-pocket health care costs make it that much harder for people to save for retirement and college costs.

Aren’t we smart, we have mastered the art of exchanging one problem for another.

If you’re one of the 150 million Americans who get health insurance through your job, prepare to pay more. The new year will likely bring higher deductibles and co-payments, penalties for not joining wellness programs and smaller employer contributions toward family coverage.

While some workers and employers blame the federal health law for those changes, benefit experts say the law is mainly accelerating trends that predate it.

“Employers are experimenting” with ways to control costs, said Paul Fronstin, at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

The bottom line is you will have to dig deeper into your own pocket.

After two years of slower-than-usual growth in health spending, employers are bracing for a spike in 2014. That’s partly because they expect more workers to enroll due to the law, which requires most Americans to carry coverage or pay a fine.

Analysts say the health law is fueling some of the changes, among them, the increased emphasis on wellness programs since the law allows employers to offer larger incentives — or penalties — for participation in wellness programs, up from 20 percent of the cost of coverage to 30 percent.

In addition, employers can now compare their own offerings with the policies sold through the health law’s websites, some of which come with higher deductibles and cost-sharing.

via Expect To Pay More For Your Employer-Sponsored Health Care Next Year – Kaiser Health News.