Lots of workers are worried about how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect their access to health coverage. That anxiety takes a toll on their work quality. But there are ways to combat this PPACA-related syndrome that can relieve employee stress and result in higher performing workers.

This was among the nuggets extracted from MetLife's 2013 employee benefits trends study. The study, which queried nearly 3,000 corporate decision-makers and rank-and-file employees, posed the question: Could health care reform make your employees less productive?

By taking the temperature of employees regarding their concerns about health care reform, the researchers found that nearly two-thirds of workers reported being worried about three reform-related matters:

• Having access to affordable health insurance (60 percent);
• having enough money to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses (61 percent);
• having their employer discontinue company-sponsored health coverage (50 percent).

Overall, the study found, 79 percent of employees interviewed were worried about at least one of the above.