Companies Shifting Benefit Costs to Employees

The world of benefits is changing especially for Millennials as companies grapple with rising healthcare costs and workers try to figure out how to create a steady stream of income in retirement. Just as companies seek to offload costs for healthcare liability to workers as they did with retirement benefits, workers struggle with not only how to pay for it all but what’s right for them.
Though Millennials ranked compensation above all benefits according to a 2016 Willis Towers Watson’s survey, if given the choice on how to spend their benefits dollars, they indicated that they would spend over 50% almost equally on healthcare costs and retirement plans. More than half would actually be willing to pay for guaranteed income in retirement up from just over 40% in 2009. Does anyone remember Defined Benefit plans?
Meanwhile more companies are shifting healthcare costs to employees moving to high deductible health care plans (HDHC) which may be appealing to younger, healthier workers especially when paired with HSAs (health savings accounts). Facing a 6% increase in healthcare costs in 2017 according to NBGH, for the first time every more than half of all workers will pay more than $1000 to cover a single person with 83% facing deductibles of almost $1500.
Overall, HDHC plans are offered at 83% of larger companies with about a third offering no other option.
The reality for younger workers is that they will have to determine the right benefits budget for them balancing increasing healthcare costs, especially drug costs which are expected to spike 7.3% next year and 16.8% for specialty drugs, and saving for retirement as well as managing student loan debt and day to day expenses. No wonder more companies are trying to help not just with health wellness programs to lower expenses but also financial wellness to help manage household budgets relieving stress.