The good news is that the growth rate of health care costs is falling — but the bad news is that employers are paying more for employee benefits as a percentage of pay. 

As the expansion of health care coverage due to the Affordable Care Act is slowing, so, too, is health care spending, according to the Altarum Institute Center for Sustainable Health Spending's Health Sector Trend Report June 2017. 

"The 2016 decline in prescription drug spending and net cost of insurance is indicative of the slowing expanded coverage from the ACA," the authors write. "Spending on health care services dropped to 5.1 percent growth in Q1 2017, perhaps signaling that the expected slowdown has finally begun."