Health Insurers, Employers Out of Synch

But here is what is really scary: The survey respondents are exactly the folks who need to be up to speed on PPACA and its implications. The 2012 Deloitte Survey of U.S. Employers is based on the online responses to 32 questions from 560 randomly selected individuals, including business owners, C-suite executives (CEOs, CFOs, and human resources officers), as well as the people who are responsible for health benefit program decisions. The businesses they represent range in size from 50 employees to more than 2,500 employees.

Among the survey items covered were strategies for employee health benefits coverage and cost containment, opinions about healthcare system performance and cost drivers, and awareness of key features of the PPACA.

The survey results confirm a Deloitte suspicion that there is a lack of alignment within companies concerning their healthcare strategy. Bill Copeland, a principal at Deloitte Consulting and one of the survey authors, notes that CEOs and CFOs often had different answers to questions than the human resources officers. For example, 77% of responding CEOs listed government regulation as a major influence on overall healthcare costs versus 49% of benefits executives.