Employers already are passing on a bigger share of their health-care costs to employees than they have over the previous decade, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based nonprofit found this year that family premiums for firms went up 3% in 2010, but workers' share of those costs rose 14%.
This so-called cost-shifting trend appears to be intensifying. When Zurich Insurance Services Inc., a property and casualty firm in Jacksonville, Fla., conducted its open enrollment last month, it asked employees to pay 10% of their premiums for the first time. The company always has paid 100%, but "we reached the breaking point," says Ryan Schwartz, senior vice president of corporate affairs, citing higher costs generated by the new health-law provisions.
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