As the covid-19 pandemic burns through its second year, the path forward for American workers remains unsettled, with many continuing to work from home while policies for maintaining a safe workplace evolve. In its 2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released Wednesday, Kaiser Family Foundation found that many employers have ramped up mental health and other benefits to provide support for their workers during uncertain times.
Meanwhile, the proportion of employers offering health insurance to their workers remained steady, and increases for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health expenses were moderate, in line with the rise in pay. Deductibles were largely unchanged from the previous two years.
“With the pandemic, I’m not sure that employers wanted to make big changes in their plans, because so many other things were disrupted,” said Gary Claxton, a senior vice president at KFF and director of the Health Care Marketplace Project. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
Reaching out to a dispersed workforce is also a challenge, with on-site activities like employee benefits fairs curtailed or eliminated.
“It’s hard to even communicate changes right now,” Claxton said.
Many employers reported that since the pandemic started they’ve made changes to their mental health and substance use benefits. Nearly 1,700 nonfederal public and private companies completed the full survey.
At companies with at least 50 workers, 39% have made such changes, including:
- 31% that increased the ways employees can tap into mental health services, such as telemedicine.
- 16% that offered employee assistance programs or other new resources for mental health.
- 6% that expanded access to in-network mental health providers.
- 4% that reduced cost sharing for such visits.
- 3% that increased coverage for out-of-network services.
Workers are taking advantage of the services. Thirty-eight percent of the largest companies with 1,000 or more workers reported that their workers used more mental health services in 2021 than the year before, while 12% of companies with at least 50 workers said their workers upped their use of mental health services.
