Even with the substantial decreases in employer-based coverage levels year over year, the cost of workers' health benefits continues increasing at a rate three times that of wages since 1999.

The result is that today only 9 percent of employers pay the full cost of their workers' health benefit. Employers are left between a rock and hard place with increasing costs in one hand and decreasing worker satisfaction in the other.

But the changing nature of the workforce and the realities of traditional market frustrations now present an interesting alternative — access to the new, portable marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Out with the old — the end of employers as a "pooling" mechanism

Traditional employer-sponsored health benefit plans as a pooling mechanism just no longer make sense. The whole value of pooling Americans based on their place of employ went out the window when the worker base itself stopped being homogeneous and stable.