As the covid-19 pandemic burns through its second year, the path forward for
American workers remains unsettled, with many continuing to work from home
while policies for maintaining a safe workplace evolve. In its
2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released Wednesday, KFF found that many employers have ramped up mental
health and other benefits to provide support for their workers during
uncertain times.
Meanwhile, the proportion of employers offering health insurance to their
workers remained steady, and increases for health insurance premiums and
out-of-pocket health expenses were moderate, in line with the rise in pay.
Deductibles were largely unchanged from the previous two years.
“With the pandemic, I’m not sure that employers wanted to make big changes in
their plans, because so many other things were disrupted,” said Gary Claxton,
a senior vice president at KFF and director of the Health Care Marketplace
Project. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
Reaching out to a dispersed workforce is also a challenge, with on-site
activities like employee benefits fairs curtailed or eliminated.
“It’s hard to even communicate changes right now,” Claxton said.
Many employers reported that since the pandemic started they’ve made changes
to their mental health and substance use benefits. Nearly 1,700 nonfederal
public and private companies completed the full survey.
At companies with at least 50 workers, 39% have made such changes, including:
-
31% that increased the ways employees can tap into mental health services,
such as telemedicine.
-
16% that offered employee assistance programs or other new resources for
mental health.
- 6% that expanded access to in-network mental health providers.
- 4% that reduced cost sharing for such visits.
- 3% that increased coverage for out-of-network services.
Workers are taking advantage of the services. Thirty-eight percent of the
largest companies with 1,000 or more workers reported that their workers used
more mental health services in 2021 than the year before, while 12% of
companies with at least 50 workers said their workers upped their use of
mental health services.
Thundermist Health Center is a federally qualified health center that serves
three communities in Rhode Island. The center’s health plan offers employees
an HMO and a preferred provider organization, and 227 workers are enrolled.
When the pandemic hit, the health plan reduced the copayments for behavioral
health visits to zero from $30.
“We wanted to encourage people to get help who were feeling any stress or
concerns,” said Cynthia Farrell, associate vice president for human resources
at Thundermist.
Once the pandemic ends, if the health center adds a copayment again, it won’t
be more than $15, she said.
The pandemic also changed the way many companies handled their wellness
programs. More than half of those with at least 50 workers expanded these
programs during the pandemic. The most common change? Expanding online
counseling services, reported by 38% of companies with 50 to 199 workers and
58% of companies with 200 or more workers. Another popular change was
expanding or changing existing wellness programs to meet the needs of people
who are working from home, reported by 17% of the smaller companies and 34% of
the larger companies that made changes.
Beefing up telemedicine services was a popular way for employers to make
services easier to access for workers, who may have been working remotely or
whose clinicians, including mental health professionals, may not have been
seeing patients in person.
In 2021, 95% of employers offered at least some health care services through
telemedicine, compared with 85% last year. These were often video
appointments, but a growing number of companies allowed telemedicine visits by
telephone or other communication modes, as well as expanded the number of
services offered this way and the types of providers that can use them.
About 155 million people in the U.S. have employer-sponsored health care. The
pandemic didn’t change the proportion of employers that offered coverage to
their workers: It has remained mostly steady at 59% for the past decade. Size
matters, however, and while 99% of companies with at least 200 workers offers
health benefits, only 56% of those with fewer than 50 workers do so.
In 2021, average premiums for both family and single coverage rose 4%, to
$22,221 for families and $7,739 for single coverage. Workers with family
coverage contribute $5,969 toward their coverage, on average, while those with
single coverage pay an average of $1,299.
The annual premium change was in line with workers’ wage growth of 5% and
inflation of 1.9%. But during the past 10 years, average premium increases
have substantially exceeded increases in wages and inflation.
Workers pay 17% of the premium for single coverage and 28% of that for family
coverage, on average. The employer pays the rest.
Deductibles have remained steady in 2021. The average deductible for single
coverage was $1,669, up 68% over the decade but not much different from the
previous two years, when the deductible was $1,644 in 2020 and $1,655 in 2019.
Eighty-five percent of workers have a deductible now; 10 years ago, the figure
was 74%.
Health care spending has slowed during the pandemic, as people delay or avoid
care that isn’t essential. Half of large employers with at least 200 workers
reported that health care use by workers was about what they expected in the
most recent quarter. But nearly a third said that utilization has been below
expectations, and 18% said it was above it, the survey found.
At Thundermist Health Center, fewer people sought out health care last year,
so the self-funded health plan, which pays employee claims directly rather
than using insurance for that purpose, fell below its expected spending,
Farrell said.
That turned out to be good news for employees, whose contribution to their
plan didn’t change.
“This year was the first year in a very long time that we didn’t have to
change our rates,” Farrell said.