More Employers Will Offer High Deductible Health Plans to Curb Costs: Survey

With healthcare cost expected to rise about 6 percent next year, more employers say they will turn to high deductible health savings plans to curb their overall costs.  Most other employers, meanwhile, said they plan to raise health care deductibles and co-pays to reduce their 2009 cost increases.

According to a preliminary findings of Mercer’s annual National Survey of Employers-Sponsored Health Plans 2008, 19 percent of all employers say they will lower their 2009 health care cost by adding consumer-directed health plans featuring a health savings account or health reimbursement arrangement.  Last year, 12 percent of all employers, including 20 percent of employers with 500 or more employees, said they were “very likely” to implement a high deductible health plan option in 2009.

Mercer said the respondents who currently offer such high deductible plans only expect their costs to increase an average of 4.5 percent in 2009, compared with a 6.4 percent average increase for employers who don’t offer high deductible health plans. And even though more employers are offering high deductible health care plans, the percentage of very small employers who offer health care continues to shrink, Blaine Bos, a senior Mercer health benefits consultant said in a press release. 

“This is one of the leading causes of the increase in the number of uninsured over the past few years, and a troublesome finding for policymakers who were counting on these plans – specifically HSAs – to reverse the trend,” Bos said.

Meanwhile, of the 1,317 employers who responded to Mercer’s survey by August 25, 59 percent said they will raise deductibles, copayments, co-insurance, or employee out-of-pocket spending limits to reduce their overall costs in 2009 – a move that increases the likelihood of more medical bad debt among insured consumers.  

According to Mercer, between 2003 and 2007 the median family deductible for in-network services in a PPO, the health plan type offered by most employers, rose from $1,000 to $1,500.