American employer health care costs are expected to rise by 6.5% in 2023. More than half of employers have said they expect to be over budget and are switching their vendors, according to survey data from Willis Towers Watson. The survey also found that about a quarter of employers expect to pass costs on to employees via higher premiums.
Sana collected data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component to understand how employee contributions to company-sponsored health plans have changed over the last 20 years. Data was collected in 2021 from a survey of private-sector employers to understand the types and costs of insurance benefits offered.
In the first year of COVID-19, the number of medical claims was artificially suppressed due to hospital policies and quarantines. Medical claims have rebounded since, mixing with inflation to increase employers’ cost pressures, which are only expected to grow in the coming year.
While the number of working adults with employment-based health insurance slumped during the first year of the pandemic, private coverage—not public—represented the largest share (66%) of coverage for working-age adults in 2021, according to Census data. That year, nearly 159 million people were covered by employer-sponsored insurance, representing approximately 48% of the country’s population.
In 2022, 13% of employees who had single-coverage health insurance had their premium payments fully paid by their company. For family coverage, 5% of employees were fully covered by their employers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Keep reading to discover how much employees actually pay for their health care plans.
