Employers will likely face health-care cost increases of 8.5% in 2012, but they’ll mitigate that burden by pushing more costs onto employees and making other changes to benefits, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report finds . Taking those plan changes into account, employers will see their health-care costs rise about 7%. (The report is based on a survey of about 1,700 employers, plus interviews with hospital execs and health-plan actuaries, among others.) Putting upward pressure on costs will be provider consolidation, cost shifting from Medicare and Medicaid by providers, and — interestingly — post-recession stress. “Several health plans interviewed indicated they were seeing more claims for stress-induced illnesses,” the report says. “Specifically, as stress levels increase, health becomes less of a priority and people are less likely to maintain a healthy lifestyle.” And research shows stress is correlated to health problems like heart disease, the reports says.

Holding down costs will be the big swath of drugs that will go off patent in 2012 and those aforementioned plan changes, namely cost-sharing — via increasing co-pays and deductibles — and making out-of-network care financially less attractive for policyholders. Employers are increasingly lifting deductibles and also switching to high-deductible health plans. “We’re projecting that by 2012, most [covered] employees will have a deductible of $500 or more in-network and $1,000 or more out-of-network,” Michael Thompson, principal with PwC Human Resources practice, tells the Health Blog. PwC also projects that a full 28% of employers will have deductibles of $1,000 or greater for in-network care next year (up from only 11% in 2009), and that high-deductible plans will be the most prevalent plan at 21% of employers. Image: iStockphoto

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Report: Employers Face 8.5% Increase in Health-Care Costs in 2012