A survey released Tuesday said single and family premiums for employer-sponsored healthcare plans increased modestly by 4 percent in 2015, but said workers are still paying a lot because of higher deductibles and other costs.
Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Educational Trust on Tuesday released its 2015 Employer Health Benefits Survey, which looked at 2015 premiums and also examined how small businesses are dealing with the impending Obamacare employer mandate.
The average annual premium for single coverage is $6,251, and workers pay an average of $1,071. For families, total premiums are $17,545, and families contribute about $4,955. Despite what many say is a modest increase, Kaiser officials said that it isn’t likely that workers are going to feel much relief.
“[The] healthcare cost slowdown is all but invisible because deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing have been going up,” said Drew Altman, head of the Kaiser Family Foundation. That is because of a shift toward higher deductibles in healthcare plans, which forces workers to pay more up front before benefits in the plan kick in.
Since 2010, deductibles have increased by 67 percent, much faster than the rise in single premiums over that same time (24 percent) and about seven times the rise in workers’ wages (10 percent), according to Kaiser.
“The pain level is significant,” Altman said on a call with reporters. “It really affects family budgets because their wages aren’t rising at the same time.”
Meanwhile, it remains unclear the average premium increase for those in Obamacare’s marketplaces in 2016. Opponents of the law latched onto insurers that were disclosing proposed rate hikes of 50 to 70 percent or more in some marketplaces.
But supporters have said that those rates still need to be finalized, and that they are expecting a modest increase in 2016 for Obamacare plans.
The survey also delved into the impact of Obamacare’s small business employer mandate, which calls for employers with 51 or more workers to offer insurance to 95 percent of full-time employees. Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt. Opponents of Obamacare have said the mandate, already in effect for businesses with 100 employees or more, will cause small businesses to shift full-time employees to part-time.
But the survey found that of employers with at least 50 full-time employees, just four percent reported they changed some job classifications from full-time to part-time so employees wouldn’t be eligible for health benefits, Kaiser said. Another 4 percent reported reducing the number of full-time employees the plan to hire due to the cost of the health benefits.
However, 10 percent reported changing some job classifications from part-time to full-time to enable workers to get coverage, the survey said.
The employer mandate wasn’t the only thing in Obamacare impacting businesses. Companies are already preparing for how to meet the law’s “Cadillac” excise tax on high-cost healthcare plans that goes into effect in 2018.
A majority of large employers (53 percent) offering health benefits said they have looked into whether any of the plans will exceed the tax’s thresholds. The tax is 40 percent on certain expensive plans.
About 19 percent of that group said their plan with the largest enrollment would be impacted by the tax, Kaiser said.
“In addition, 13 percent of large firms offering health benefits say they have made changes to their plans to avoid reaching the excise tax thresholds, and 8 percent say they switched to a lower-cost health plan,” Kaiser said in a press release.
There has been bipartisan support in Congress to repeal the tax, but so far it hasn’t gone anywhere. Opposition to the tax brings together strange bedfellows, as unions and big business are both worried about its impact.
