Mercer is offering health care spending junkies a sneak preview at data still in the development stage. The news looks good — employers are again reporting that they’re improving their containment of health care costs as a corporate line item.

Here are the highlights from this large-scale survey of U.S. corporations:

  • After plan design alterations, employers say they expect an average cost increase of 4.2 percent;

  • This marks the fifth straight year employers have kept cost increases under an informal target of 5 percent;

  • Consensus is building around the use of consumer-directed plans remain to avoid paying the so-called Cadillac tax.

The news about the cost estimate is especially buoying because the actual 2014 increase as reported by employers was slightly less than 4 percent.

And there’s more good news: Employers reported that, if they made no design changes, the increase would be about 6.4 percent — down from 7.1 percent for 2015 “and ... the lowest rate of underlying cost growth seen since Mercer began collecting this information in 2005.”

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Dan Cook

Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.