While much of the discussion of health care premiums has focused on the increases slated for plans offered through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, costs are also expected to rise for the tens of millions of Americans covered by employer-sponsored insurance.
A recent survey of 133 large companies by the National Business Group on Health finds that health care costs will increase by an average of 6 percent for large employers. More than a third of those employers will only offer high-deductible plans.
Higher costs for employers and employees are largely being driven by the ever-increasing prices of prescriptions drugs, which are expected to go up 7.3 percent next year. High-price specialty drugs for cancer and other serious conditions are rising even more dramatically: They are expected to go up 16.8 percent next year.
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The rising costs will largely be borne by employees, rather than employers, as companies continue to make workers pay for a larger share of their health care through higher deductibles and increased copays.
Another survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 2017 will be the first year when more than half of employees (51 percent) will have deductibles of over $1,000. Last year 46 percent had a deductible over $1,000.
The same survey finds the average deductible for an individual this year to be $1,478. That's an increase of nearly 50 percent in the past five years.
Bettina Deynes, vice president of human resources for the Society for Human Resource Management, tells The Wall Street Journal that higher out-of-pocket costs are simply the new paradigm of employer-based health insurance.
"Long gone are the days when you thought your insurance — even if you were paying higher premiums — was going to cover you very well," she says. "Even if you select the best plans your company offered, you are still not safe from encountering some major expenses."
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