Employees bear brunt of rising health care costs in U.S.

WASHINGTON – As employers struggle with rising health care costs and a sour economy, U.S. workers for the first time in at least a decade are being asked to shoulder the entire cost of rising health benefits on their own.

The average worker with a family plan was hit with a 14 percent premium increase this year, pushing the bill to nearly $4,000 a year, according to a survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

That is the largest annual increase since the survey began in 1999 and a marked change from previous years when employers generally split the cost of rising premiums with their employees.

Indeed, the average employer contribution to a family plan did not go up at all this year, meaning the entire increase was borne by workers.

At the same time, nearly a third of employers reported that they either reduced the scope of benefits they are offering this year or increased the amount workers must pay out of pocket for their medical care.

Workers saw average co-pays for routine office visits rise 10 percent and deductibles continue their surge upward.

In 2010, more than a quarter of American workers with employer-provided health coverage were in plans with deductibles of at least $1,000.

“It’s really bad news for everybody,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization of large employers that provide coverage to about 50 million workers, retirees and dependents.

Overall, premium growth slowed slightly this year to 3 percent, with the average annual cost of a family health plan reaching $13,370. Workers picked up 30 percent of that bill. The average plan for a single individual cost $5,049.

The squeeze, reported by employers between January and May, largely reflects the fallout of the ongoing economic slowdown and may be ameliorated in future years as the new health care law is implemented.

But it could further complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to rally support for the law, which is expected to do relatively little in the short term to contain rising medical bills.

“There have been times when employers have been able to absorb costs. This is not one of those times,” said James Gelfand, health policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading critic of the new law.

The law, which focused on expanding coverage for Americans who don’t get insurance through work, was designed to largely preserve the existing employer-based health system.

And independent analyses of the law estimate that most Americans will continue to get insurance through their employer, as some 157 million do now.

Administration officials Thursday pointed to two new studies from the Rand Corp. and the Commonwealth Fund that predicted small businesses in particular will likely expand coverage in coming years, in part with help from billions of dollars of new tax credits.

“We have really just begun our efforts,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, stressing the growing number of tools government regulators have to control insurance premiums.

The Kaiser survey found that the percentage of firms offering health benefits actually increased from 60 percent to 69 percent this year, an unexpected spike that analysts speculate may reflect the failure of many businesses that didn’t offer benefits.

But the survey suggests that the coverage workers are being offered is becoming increasingly unattractive as employers try to control their own costs in the down economy.