Industry News

On November 10, 2021, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released its survey report, 2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey. The survey provides detailed information regarding health insurance premiums, employer and employee contributions, employee cost-sharing, wellness programs and other topics. This year’s report also examines changes employers made to their health benefits due to the COVID-19 pandemic such as increases in telemedicine and mental health benefits.

Some of the key findings include:

• Employer-sponsored health insurance covers about 155 million of the non-elderly population in the U.S.  Approximately 59% of all employers offer health care benefits to at least some workers, and 62% of workers are covered.  All of these percentages are similar to 2020.
• For employer-sponsored family coverage, annual premiums averaged $22,221 in 2021, up 4% from 2020. 
• For employer-sponsored single coverage, annual premiums averaged $7,739 in 2021, up 4% from 2020. 
• With regard to employee cost-sharing for health care, about 85% of all covered workers faced a general annual deductible, which averaged $1,669 for single coverage in 2021.  Workers in small firms (i.e., with 3 to 199 employees) were more likely to have larger deductibles, which averaged $2,379 as compared with $1,397 in large firms (with 200 or more employees).
• Almost all large firms and many small firms have health and wellness programs that help workers identify health issues and manage chronic conditions (i.e., health risk assessments, biometric screenings and health promotion programs).  

KFF also updated an interactive graphing tool to examine trends in premiums and worker contributions among workers covered by employer-sponsored coverage at different types of firms.  The tool uses a web-based interface to the underlying Kaiser/HRET data from the Employer Health Benefits Surveys from 1999-2021. 

The survey report and interactive graphic tool are available here.