Summary
Employees may find it a poor substitute, but their employers are progressively more often swapping full funding of health insurance for cheaper but more flexible employee benefit plans. Working with larger deductibles, higher coinsurance, various types of flexible health reimbursement accounts and a wider range of voluntary employee-paid benefits, employers are trying to carefully contain their growing health care costs without looking like cheapskates, say employee benefits experts. And as a result, they are turning to their agents and brokers for new consumer-directed health plans and support products, say insurers and third-party administrators. Nine health plans and 159 large employers participated in a survey designed to identify growth patterns in the new health plan model that allows employers to give their workers more flexibility in making health care decisions by applying higher coinsurance and deductibles and either a health reimbursement account (HRA) or health savings account (HSA). The survey indicates that enrollment in consumer-directed plans will grow to 478,000 this year, up from 169,000 in 2003. About one-third of large companies expect to offer consumer-directed health plans to workers next year, compared to about 21% this year.
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Extract
Growth in Consumer-Directed Plans Anticipated
Employees may find it a poor substitute, but their employers are progressively more often swapping full funding of health insurance for cheaper but more flexible employee benefit plans.
Working with larger deductibles, higher coinsurance, various types of flexible health reimbursement accounts and a wider range of voluntary employee-paid benefits, employers are trying to carefully contain their growi...See the full content of this document
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