A report issued earlier this year by America's Health Insurance Plans revealed an increase in the amount of employees of various businesses in the U.S. using high-deductible insurance plans. Such plans, when paired with a savings account option, are effectively shifting the burden of the resulting costs to the employee rather than the employer.
The number of American workers using the aforementioned type of employee benefits increased by a total of 14 percent, from 10 million in January 2010 to over 11.4 million exactly a year later. Some employers are mandating that coverage of this variety be the only option for their staff, a move being seen as a method of contingency planning for future changes in federal healthcare laws.
An effort to increase control over costs for benefits packages may be another motivating factor in employers' emphasis on high-deductible insurance, as an August survey by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH) projected that healthcare costs for U.S. businesses would increase by 7.2 percent in 2012.
A total of 25 percent of respondents to the NBGH survey said increasing the costs of benefits shouldered by employees was the best way to control their expenses in this area.
