$8,945: Average per-employee cost of health benefits.
"Small and large employers used different strategies to keep cost growth down in 2009. Small employers moved employees into low-cost consumer-directed health plans and raised PPO deductibles. We saw relatively little cost-shifting among large employers what jumped out was a real increase in their use of programs and policies designed to improve work force health."
-Beth Umland, Mercer
-2%: Medical plan cost increases in 2009 were about 2% lower, on average, among employers with extensive health management programs than among those employers offering limited or no health management programs.
75% of employers that have measured the return on their investment in health management programs say they are satisfied with the year-over-year savings, lower utilization rates or improved health risks.
"More employers were willing to place their bet on health management in 2009. But they will want to see continual gains. There's growing anecdotal evidence that well-designed and communicated health management programs can improve outcomes, but we need to work harder at understanding and eliminating missed opportunities."
-Linda Havlin, Mercer
Employers held cost growth to 5.5% in 2009, the lowest increase in a decade.
"Small employers, like large employers, want control over how their money is spent. Using consumerism and health management strategies, employers have been able to keep cost increases stable for the past five years, and even to bend the trend in the right direction in 2009. These results signal their reluctance to sign on to an annual expense over which they ultimately have no control."
-Linda Havlin, Mercer
"Over the past decade employers have been moving away from HMOs to PPOs, in part because PPOs give them greater flexibility to control cost sharing with members. Now we're seeing growth in consumer-directed health plans, in which cost-sharing is sweetened by an account that allows employees to accumulate any health care dollars they save by spending less or spending more wisely."
-Beth Umland, Mercer's director of health and benefits research
