Survey: Most Employers Stick With Lifetime Benefits Maximums

Few large U.S. employers are acting early to remove caps on health plan reimbursement totals.

The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, Brookfield, Wis., has reported that finding in a summary of results from a May survey of 1,021 individuals representing single-employer U.S. benefit plans. Some participants work for small employers, but a majority are at employers with more than 50 employees.

The new Affordable Care Act, the legislative package that includes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, will be requiring employers to eliminate lifetime health benefits maximums in 2011 and sharply restrict use of annual maximums. ACA provisions will ban use of annual maximums starting in 2014.

Only 4% of the survey participants said the employers they represent will remove the lifetime maximums or annual maximums before they are required to do so, and 86% said they will wait until they are required to eliminate lifetime maximums until they must.