Workers are seeing tremendously higher expenses for their insurance plans when compared to a decade ago.
According to a recent data analysis that was conducted by Aon Hewitt, employees working for large and medium sized companies in 2015 were paying an average annual $4,700 in health care costs for their plans.
Comparatively, back in 2005, the amount being paid by employees with these health plans was $2,001.
Mike Morrow, the senior vice president of Aon Hewitt explained that companies are currently looking for ways to help to keep their costs to a minimum and, as a result, they are changing the coverage available in their benefits programs. As a result, this is increasing the percentage of the health care costs that are being paid out of the pockets of the employees as employers move toward leaner plans.
This trend has caused health care costs for workers to steadily and rapidly rise over the last ten years.
The Aon Hewitt data showed that 38 percent of employers have increased the deductibles and/or copays for their employees over the last year. Moreover, it also revealed that an additional 46 percent may take similar steps into the future.
The report also indicated that companies are starting to offer their employees high deductible health plans (HDHPs) more commonly. It is only within the last decade that this option had made itself available to employers. This, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research director, Gerald Kominski. He pointed out that HDHPs have become the second most popular health insurance plan, having even surpassed the health maintenance organization plans (HMOs).
The data from the report indicated that there are other ways in which health care costs are being slashed by employers. For instance, 18 percent of employers have decreased their subsidies for coverage of the dependents of their workers. Moreover 17 percent have created a surcharge for covering adult dependents who also have access to health plans from other sources. Moreover, 43 percent of midsize to large businesses are considering a technique known as unitized pricing. In this way, employees would pay for the health insurance per person instead of for an individual or family.