Benefitfocus Industry Comparison Reveals Manufacturing is Leading Adoption of High-Deductible Health Plans

CHARLESTON, S.C., June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Benefitfocus, Inc. BNFT, a leading provider of cloud-based benefits management software, today released its "Benefitfocus State of Employee Benefits 2016 – Industry Edition," a snapshot of real, but anonymous, benefit selection data from over 400,000 consumers across 200 employers in the education, health care and manufacturing industries on the BENEFITFOCUS® Platform.

This third report in the "State of Employee Benefits" research series segments by industry, data from the initial report, which analyzed behavioral data from the company's large employers. The industry edition reveals distinct differences in benefits offerings, with manufacturing leading adoption of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), education largely favoring traditional plans (PPOs, HMOs, etc.) and health care offering the most voluntary benefits to help employees manage the financial risk gap.

Manufacturing is the only one of the three industries to offer a combination of HDHPs and traditional plans at a higher rate than traditional plans only (48 to 46 percent, respectively), and manufacturing employees selected an HDHP over a traditional plan 46 percent of the time. The findings suggest an opportunity for manufacturing employers to encourage their employees to participate in health savings accounts (HSAs) or flexible spending accounts (FSAs) as a means of covering higher out-of-pocket costs associated with HDHPs.  

In contrast, only 23 percent of education employers offered at least one HDHP, with traditional health plans dominating the benefits mix. HMOs, known for narrow provider networks but low out-of-pocket costs, made up the bulk (44 percent) of employee enrollments, which suggests an opportunity to offer a wider range of lower cost benefits options tailored to a multi-generational workforce.

Employees in the health care industry face high deductibles regardless of plan selection, but are also better equipped to cover unexpected medical costs, turning to "gap" voluntary benefits—products including critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity insurance—to help supplement medical coverage. Health care employers offered gap products at the highest rate of the three industries, 12 percentage points above the Benefitfocus Platform average, and nearly half of health care workers selected one when given the choice.

"Industries that have historically relied on traditional medical offerings to attract and retain talent are going to soon realize that one-size-fits-all does not work for all employees," said Shawn Jenkins, Benefitfocus CEO. "By incorporating more choice into plan offerings, employers are recognizing that benefits management technology enables more affordable and customizable ways of providing health care protection than just traditional HMO and PPO plans."

For more findings, download the full Benefitfocus State of Employee Benefits 2016 – Industry Edition.

Study Methodology
The "Benefitfocus State of Employee Benefits 2016 – Industry Edition" report analyzed anonymous benefit selection data from Benefitfocus' data warehouse, using data from the large employer edition and drilling down into the top three industries represented in that report – education, health care and manufacturing. The industry report includes data from over 400,000 employees during the fall 2015 open enrollment period for approximately 200 large employers, all with 1,000 or more employees.

About Benefitfocus
Benefitfocus BNFT provides a leading cloud-based benefits management platform that simplifies how organizations and individuals shop for, enroll in, manage and exchange benefits. Every day leading employers, insurance companies and millions of consumers rely on our platform to manage, scale and exchange benefits data seamlessly. In an increasingly complex benefits landscape, we bring order to chaos so our clients and their employees have access to better information, make better decisions and lead better lives. Learn more at www.benefitfocus.com, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual results might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: the need to innovate and provide useful products and services; changes in government regulations; the immature and volatile nature of the market for our products and services and other factors that could impact our anticipated growth; management of growth; fluctuations in our financial results; general economic risks; reliance on key personnel; our ability to compete effectively; our ability to maintain our culture and recruit and retain qualified personnel; privacy, security and other risks associated with our business; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in our SEC filings, copies of which are available free of charge within the Investor Relations section of the Benefitfocus website at http://investor.benefitfocus.com/sec.cfm or upon request from our investor relations department. Benefitfocus assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

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SOURCE Benefitfocus, Inc.