Summary: “It’s not your imagination. If you have employer health insurance, you’re probably paying more and more out of your own pocket,” Jason Millman writes in The Washington Post.
“High-deductible plans have been under the microscope during the past year, given their prevalence among new individual coverage plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. But it’s also a trend that’s also playing out under employer-sponsored health plans covering about 150 million people, as illustrated by the annual survey on employee health benefits from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
“First, the headline findings from the new survey of about 2,000 firms. The average cost of an employer-sponsored family health plan reached $16,384 this year, up 3 percent from the previous year, with employees paying $4,823 toward that. The increase tracks pretty closely with the growth of wages and inflation over the past year, and it continues a few years of relatively modest premium increases. The number of firms offering coverage was down slightly, from 57 percent in 2013 to 55 percent this year, though a vast majority of companies with 50 or more employees offer coverage (92 percent).
“While premiums in employer plans have grown 26 percent in the past five years, that’s been outpaced over the same time by the 47 percent rise in the average deductible — the amount of care a worker has to pay for before insurance kicks in.” –Jason Millman, ‘Yes, you are paying a lot more for your employer health plan than you used to – The Washington Post.,” Sept. 10, 2014
