Will Employer Based Health Care Benefits Decline in the Next Ten Years?

Vanessa Fuhrmans of the Wall Street Journal reports that research indicates that trend in employer paid health care benefits may decline over the next 10 years.

"The 30% plunge in health insurers’ shares in recent weeks is an index of how seriously Wall Street believes President Obama’s health-reform agenda will ultimately upend private-sector insurance. Now comes a pair of surveys that indicate more of Corporate America anticipates the end of health-care benefits as we know them, too.
According to a survey of 489 large U.S. employers out today, 62% said they were confident they would still be offering their workers health coverage 10 years from now, down from 73% last year. The economic crisis one reason for the drop; the prospect of a new and much different health-insurance system was another.
“This is the first time in the 14 years that we have conducted this survey that employer confidence declined, and it is not related to an increase in cost trends,” said Ted Nussbaum, a director at Watson Wyatt, an employee benefits consulting group, which conducted the survey with the National Business Group on Health.
A employer poll released last week by Hewitt Associates, a rival consultancy, echoes the sentiment. Though the majority of the 340 big employers surveyed had no immediate plans to change their health coverage strategy, one-fifth said their aim is to move away from directly providing health benefits in the next three to five years — up from 4% in 2008 and none in 2007."