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Large Portion of Employers Dissatisfied With Behavioral Healthcare Coverage in Health Plans
While 91% of employers polled in a recent survey said their largest health insurance plan available to employees had enough primary care providers to offer access to services, satisfaction with the number of mental health and substance use disorder treatment providers available was significantly lower.
Only 68% of small companies and 59% of large firms that participated in the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Employer Health Benefits Survey said their plans had a sufficient number of mental healthcare providers to deliver timely services for plan enrollees. Those figures dipped to 59% of small firms and 58% of large employers regarding access to services for substance use conditions.
The findings from the annual survey were published online by the journal Health Affairs.
From January to July 2023, KFF surveyed 24,891 private firms and non-federal government employers with at least 3 employees, and 2133 organizations accounting for 3.1 million workers completed the full survey. KFF said the 15% response rate for completing the full survey was in line with past years (15% in 2021 and 14% in 2022).
While dissatisfaction with the number of behavioral healthcare providers covered within their health plans was a common theme among both large and small employers, many said they are making efforts to improve access: 18% of large employers (including 44% of employers with at least 5000 workers) said they have taken steps to increase the number of mental health providers in their plan networks within the past 12 months.
Other findings from the KFF report included the following:
- The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health insurance was $23,968, a 7% year-over-year increase. Covered workers contributed an average of 17% of the cost of single coverage and 29% of the cost of family coverage. About a quarter of employers surveyed said their employees had a “high” level of concern with the level of cost sharing required by their plans.
- During the past 10 years, the average family premium has increased 47%, while inflation has grown by 30% and wages have grown by 42% during the same period.
- Ninety-one percent of employers with at least 50 workers and 97% of those with at least 200 workers offering health benefits covered services provided through telehealth platforms in their health insurance plan with the largest enrollment. Despite uncertainty over the continued role of telehealth post-COVID-19 pandemic, 41% of firms believed telehealth would continue to have a “very important” role for behavioral health services and 30% said it would have an “important” role for behavioral health moving forward.
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