Forty percent of larger companies now offer or plan to offer a health savings account to employees, and 26% offer or plan to offer a health reimbursement account, according to an annual survey of 573 large companies conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide and the National Business Group on Health. However, employee enrollment in consumer-directed health plans remains low at 8%, an increase of only one percentage point from 2006. But employers are realizing lower healthcare costs with broader participation in CDHPs. Employers with 10% or more of their covered population in a CDHP are holding healthcare cost increases to a lower level--6.5% on average. Some employers are also driving enrollment by offering CDHPs as their only option. Currently, 5% of employers are offering CDHPs on a total replacement basis, and another 4% will do so in 2008.
In addition, employers that implement CDHPs as part of a broader health improvement strategy have made greater inroads into controlling health cost increases. One-fourth of respondents experienced median healthcare cost increases of 2.5% in the past two years, compared with an 11% average for the poorest performers and an overall average of 8%.
