Health insurance is so important to employees that 1 in 3 would leave their jobs if their employers stopped fully sponsoring their health benefits, according to an Accenture survey released today.
Luckily for workers, employer-sponsored health insurance coverage has remained stable from June 2013 to March 2015, according to a recent brief from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Reform Monitoring Survey. Employer-sponsored coverage was in decline prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), FierceHealthPayer has reported, and the brief credited the ACA's individual mandate and federal subsidies for the current stability.
Federal subsidies, meanwhile, may be in peril if the Supreme Court decides in favor of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case. The subsidies have helped 15 million people enroll in health plans in the last 15 years.
Respondents to the Accenture survey don't seem to be worried, as 94 percent said they expect their employer to continue to provide health insurance. But if their employers do decide to discontinue coverage, 64 percent said it would lead to widespread employee discontent, 32 percent said worker motivation would decrease and 21 percent said absenteeism would rise.
"When exploring alternatives to employee health benefits, employers must carefully consider whether the health nsurance cost savings outweigh the projected impact to turnover and productivity losses," Rich Birhanzel, managing director for Accenture Health Administration Services, said in a statement emailed to FierceHealthPayer.
Even if employer-sponsored coverage remains stable, consumers are likely to feel the pinch of substantial predicted increases in health insurance rates in 2016.
To learn more:
- check out the survey (.pdf)
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