Dive Brief:

• An article at Forbes considers that 2016 may be the year that many Americans finally stop working at jobs just to retain their health insurance because many employers, confronted with rising health benefit costs, are moving to high-deductible plans that may remove the concept of "golden handcuffs" for employees. 

• Also, because employers are also asking employees to shoulder more healthcare costs through those high-deductible plans (on average, workers are paying $4,955 towards the cost of their coverage), deductibles have jumped by a staggering 67% since 2010, the article points out.

• The article then posits the idea that if employer-provided health insurance can't match what workers can purchase as consumers via exhanges and the open market (both in quality and cost), then employers who are moving to those benefits need to ask themselves how they can retain top talent – for whom this benefit is really important – and attract new talent at the same time.

Dive Insight:

Many employers haven’t considered the "potential disruption that current healthcare trends may cause to their relationships with employees" – and that could be a big mistake, the article notes.

The best employees tend to apply an entrepreneurial mindset to their own careers, which means they also "do the math" regarding how they are compensated. The article notes that they will know whether or not their raises are in line with the cost of living.

"If the health plan at their company no longer delivers real value, they can easily figure out how to buy a bare bones health plan on their own to replace it and go launch a business on their own – or join a company that prioritizes this benefit," the article says.

This could be the year it all happens, says the article. One research group reports that 33% of employers expect the greatest cost increase from Affordable Care Act implementation to take place in 2016, and 82% expect it to increase their organization’s costs this year. With their costs rising, 42% of employers have or are considering a high deductible health plan with a health savings account.

In the end, the article explains that financial compensation, including benefits, drives the employer-employee relationship. Employers who keep putting more burden on workers to cover their own healthcare costs are at risk of losing the most talented people, some of whom will jump to employers who are not taking that path.