In 2006, 11.4 percent of private-sector employees were enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. That percentage rose to 46.5 percent in 2016, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs.
Researchers studied data from 2006 to 2016, which they derived from an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau and sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The survey contains information on about 30,000 private-sector organizations each year. The authors' sample size allowed for more research of how firm size affected the prevalence of high-deductible health plans than in previous studies.
The researchers found 78 percent of high-deductible enrollees in firms with fewer than 25 employees lacked an employer-funded account, such as a health savings account, to help offset employees' out-of-pocket costs in 2016. That's compared to only 35.2 percent of high-deductible enrollees in firms with at least 1,000 employees.
The study authors also found that in 2006, high-deductible plans were most prevalent in small firms, with prevalence shrinking as firm size increased. While employees with the largest firms remained among the least likely to enroll in a high-deductible health plan in 2016, firms in the middle — with between 25 and 99 employees — became the most likely to offer high-deductible health plans that year.
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