Employers, wary of a potential jump in medical inflation, hope to rein in costs in the short term while keeping employee expenses down as they roll out their health coverage plans for the 2023 open enrollment season.
“Employers didn’t necessarily have a significant amount of pressure around health-care costs” in 2022, Sally Welborn, executive director of advisory services for the Employer Health Innovation Roundtable, said in an interview. Instead, “The pressure’s going to happen in 2023 for 2024.”
Interest in controlling expenses without shifting more costs to employees is heightened “because we are in an inflationary period” and there’s a potential for a recession, Welborn said. Employers are asking, “What can we do that will have immediate impact with the least abrasion to employees and the most impact in the short term?”
Family premiums for employer-sponsored health coverage stayed flat in 2022, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the $22,463 average cost is nevertheless up 20% over the past five years compared with 17% in overall inflation during that period. Current inflation could lead to higher costs in 2023.
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