The growth in the cost of providing worker benefits continues to slow as employers increasingly shift more of the financial burden onto employees, according to preliminary survey results of Mercer’s National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2008.

Lowered costs are a “relief,” but merely shifting the burden is not a complete success, according to Mercer. “While some employers are holding down cost growth with innovative methods of improving healthcare quality and efficiency, more typically employers struggling with increases they can’t handle resort to the tried and true method of shifting cost to employees,” Blaine Bos, a senior Mercer health and benefits consultant, said in a written statement.

Annual health-benefit cost growth has remained around 6% since 2005, but is on track to increase 5.7% in 2009—the lowest increase in growth in more than a decade, according to Mercer’s findings from 1,317 employer health plan sponsors that replied so far to the survey. Full survey findings from about 3,000 respondents will be available later this year.

More than half, 59%, of employers will raise employee deductibles, copayments, coinsurance or out-of-pocket spending limits to reduce their own cost increases, according to the survey. Some 19% of employers said they will lower their costs by adding a high-deductible consumer-directed health plan. Mercer said last year, 12% of employers said they would “very likely” launch a consumer-directed plan by 2009.

If employers made no changes to their current health plans, cost of renewal would increase by about 8% next year, according to the survey. - by Jean DerGurahian, Crain Pulblications Modern Healthcare Daily Dose – September 4, 2008