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State health insurance exchanges created under the new health care law are in turmoil. By contrast, the employer market — where the majority of Americans still get their coverage — seems like a bastion of stability. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation released on Wednesday shows that the share of employers offering coverage remained steady this year, and that the cost of premiums for health plans remained largely unchanged. (Abelson, 9/14)

While politicians have been embroiled in a fiery debate over President Obama's signature health-care law, a quiet but profound shift is fundamentally reshaping how health insurance works for the roughly 155 million Americans who receive coverage through their employers. A national survey of employer health benefits released Wednesday shows how much deductibles — the health-care costs that people must pay out of their own pockets before insurance kicks in — have shot up. In 2016, 4 in 5 workers had a deductible as part of their individual coverage, averaging $1,478. During the past five years, deductibles have grown 10 times as fast as inflation and nearly six times as fast as wages, according to the new report. (Johnson, 9/14)

The average cost of health coverage offered by employers pushed above $18,000 for a family plan this year, though the growth was slowed by the accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, according to a major survey. Annual premium cost rose 3% to $18,142 for an employer family plan in 2016, from $17,545 last year, according to the annual poll of employers performed by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation along with the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association. (Wilde Mathews, 9/14)

Rising deductibles have entered the spotlight recently because they push more of the costs and responsibilities of getting treatment onto consumers. Mylan NV’s prices for EpiPen allergy shots gained public attention as mounting deductibles forced increasing numbers of patients to pay the device’s full cost, more than $600 for a pair. (Tracer, 9/14)

The relatively modest increase in employer-sponsored insurance, which covers 150 million people nationwide, stands in sharp contrast to the volatility in premiums for plans being offered for next year on Affordable Care Act exchanges. The key difference is that premiums for employee-sponsored insurance are for a stable market, said Gary Claxton, a Kaiser vice president and director of the Health Care Marketplace Project. (Brubaker, 9/14)

The study of more than 1,900 small and large companies showed little evidence that high costs are prompting employers to dump health coverage or cut workers’ hours to make them ineligible for insurance. The Affordable Care Act requires companies with at least 50 employees to offer coverage to most full-time workers but not part-timers. Seven percent of companies falling under the requirement reported they were shifting employees from part time to full time to make them eligible for health insurance. Only 2 percent said they were switching full-timers to part time to make them ineligible. (Hancock and Luthra, 9/14)

High deductible health plans are the new normal. Just over half of employees this year have a health insurance policy with a deductible of at least $1,000, according to a survey of employers from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It's the continuation of a multiyear trend of companies passing more of the costs of employee health care back onto workers. (Kodjak, 9/14)

More than 150 million Americans get their health coverage through their employer, compared to the roughly 20 million people who buy their coverage on and off the Affordable Care Act's troubled insurance exchanges. ... Employers and some analysts argue that high deductibles, copays and coinsurance rates—all cost-sharing mechanisms that give consumers more “skin in the game”—spur people to think more about costs and reduce unnecessary healthcare services. But many people feel their employer-sponsored coverage has become less of a benefit and more like a way to shift out-of-pocket costs onto the backs of workers. (Herman, 9/14)

“What we’re really seeing this year, but we’ve seen it develop gradually, is a shift in what insurance is for most Americans — from more comprehensive to skimpier coverage,” said Drew Altman, president of the California-based Kaiser Family Foundation. “I think it’s the biggest change in health care in America that we are not really debating.” There’s been much more political focus, Altman noted, on the federal Affordable Care Act, which continues to transform the market where individuals purchase coverage outside of employer groups. (Snowbeck, 9/14)

This year, 83 percent of workers have some kind of deductible as part of their employer-sponsored health plan. Over the past five years the average amount of a single deductible rose to $1,478, up from $991 in 2011, the Kaiser study showed. (Deam, 9/14)

Two new sets of data released this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Education Trust illustrate a promising trend in health care costs and outcomes in Virginia. (Demeria, 9/14)

Premium growth in the employer market is far lower than the growth in the individual market. Insurers on the ACA exchanges have requested double-digit rate increases for 2017 across the country. Insurers say this is a result of sicker than expected enrollees, the abuse of special enrollment periods, and the end of two Obamacare programs designed to reduce risk. (Owens, 9/14)

Several new reports prove that the Affordable Care Act has made health insurance more affordable and accessible to Marylanders, federal health officials said Wednesday. The Department of Health and Human Services touted the achievements of the federal health care law saying that premiums are growing slower than before it went into affect and that more people than ever now have insurance. (McDaniels, 9/14)