PPACA to prompt decline in employer-provided health coverage

About 60 percent of employers surveyed say their health benefit plans will require their company to pay the upcoming health care "Cadillac Tax" if they don't make plan changes. The levy is a 40 percent excise tax on high-value benefit plans passed as part of PPACA.

Though health care costs are rising at a slower pace than in previous years — 2 percent in 2013, down from 6 percent in 2011 — 2013's growth in employer health care spending outpaced inflation by more than half a percentage point (2.0 percent vs. 1.5 percent).

The report adds that between 2012 and 2013, workers' wages increased just 1.8 percent, a gain largely erased by the commensurate rise in inflation. Over the same period, single employees and families experienced 4 percent and 5 percent increases, respectively, in their health insurance premiums.

Among the study's additional findings:

• 98 percent of HR professionals say that a shortage of skilled workers, particularly those with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills, will impact the U.S. workplace in the next five years.
• 78 percent of workers, including millennials, GenXers and boomers, base their acceptance or rejection of a job offer in part on the benefits package.
• 77 percent of workers believe that missing work for three months because of injury or illness would result in a financial hardship.
• 74 percent of employees are supportive of or do not object to employers automatically enrolling new employees in employee-paid disability plans so long as the employee can opt out.
• In the past 10 years, employees have increased their voluntary benefit purchases by $18 billion dollars. In 2013 alone, employees increased this type of spending by nearly 24 percent.

Read the full report here.