As part of the survey, employers were asked what changes they made or are planning to make as regulations from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act continue to come into effect. The survey found the following:

Annual benefit limits: The majority of employers (59 percent) are not making any changes for 2012, (full restrictions on benefit limits will be banned in 2014). However, 27 percent are making changes to annual limits for preventive and wellness services. Another 14 percent are making changes to annual limits for mental health and substance abuse services.

Grandfather status: Twenty-three percent will have at least one benefit option that keeps its grandfather status in 2012 while 19 percent will drop its grandfather status. About one half (49 percent) did not have any benefit option in grandfather status this year.

Default plan for new hires: Twenty-seven percent plan to use their least costly health plan for employees as their default plan for new full-time hires as required, but only 19 percent plan to use the least costly plan for employers as the default plan.

"Employers understand that affordability is tied to employees' premium costs and household incomes so they have two strong arguments for aggressively driving down costs — both theirs and employees," Darling said. "That said, the federal government has to start helping reduce costs too. Like the national debt crisis that we are struggling to solve, we have to solve the health care cost crisis, which is seriously undermining our economy, businesses' abilities to create jobs, working families, our global competitiveness and our standard of living. This is our other national crisis, and they are so intertwined that if we don't reduce costs and medical trend, we will continue to barrel toward insolvency."

Instant Insights /

Workers face higher health care costs

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