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The average cost for U.S. employers to pay for employee health care is expected to increase by 6.5% in 2023 to over $13,800 per employee. This is largely due to economic inflationary pressures.
This projection is more than double the 3% increase in healthcare budgets employers experienced from 2021-2022. However, it is well below his 9.1% inflation rate reported by the Consumer Price Index.
On average, clients’ budgeted healthcare costs in 2022 are $13,020 per employee. This analysis uses the company’s Health Value Initiative database, which collects information for approximately 700 US employers representing approximately 5.6 million employees.
impact?
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, most employers’ medical claims were subdued. Meanwhile, many cares have been postponed or skipped during quarantine. Employers are seeing a return to more typical growth levels in their medical claims experience and expect cost pressures from inflation next year.
Due to the multi-year nature of typical provider contracts, price increases due to economic inflation are usually slow to be reflected in healthcare trends. will be Other factors putting pressure on healthcare trends include new technologies, severe catastrophic claims, blockbuster drugs, and an increasing share of specialty drugs.
When it comes to health insurance in 2022, the company’s analysis showed that employers’ costs would rise by 3.7%, while premiums from employee payrolls would grow modestly by 0.6% from 2021. Plan costs include premiums for employer and employee medical and prescription drug costs, but exclude employee copayments such as deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance.
On average, employers subsidize about 81% of planning costs, and employees pay the rest.
According to Aon, 2022 employees will contribute about $4,412 to health insurance this year, of which $2,520 will come from paychecks and $1,892 will come from deductibles, copays, coinsurance and other forms of insurance. Paid through the plan design feature.
the bigger trend
Employers of all sizes are looking to enhance their health insurance options in an effort to boost hiring and retention in 2023, according to a Mercer survey in July.
More than two-thirds of the 700 respondents want to enhance their health and benefits offerings in the coming year. Overall, 61% of participating U.S. employers conduct surveys on employee benefits preferences.
The survey also showed a rapid increase in the provision of a wide range of family benefits. 70% of employers surveyed currently offer or plan to offer paid parental leave in 2023, and 53% offer or plan to offer paid adoption leave. Nearly a tenth of large employers (companies with more than 5,000 employees) also said they would offer on-site childcare now or by 2023, and 22% said they would have a backup childcare center. We plan to provide access to our services.
twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
