If it's an employer-provided plan, though, you don't generally see the premium savings. My employer provides the option (through one of the major payroll/HR providers) of a "regular" plan or a high-deductible plan, but neither choice affects my take-home pay. I still chose the HDHP though because I'm generally healthy and it lets you invest pre-tax money with no capital gains tax, which is nice.
Ok, so then, the nut of this story is that employers are adopting HDHPs as a way of reducing their own costs, but not passing the savings to employees, which defeats the purpose of HDHPs and just amounts to screwing employees over?
Or employers can reduce pay raises. Or cut pay. Or do any number of things to hit whatever net income targets. Ideally, we wouldn’t have employers involved in all this price obfuscation, and it would be easy for employees to compare compensation.
I'm not sure - since I have either option, I don't feel screwed over, but if an HDHP were the only option I would definitely expect to see an increase in take-home pay.
In a decade of employment I've not had an employer offer a plan that wasn't an HDHP. It seems to be somewhat regional, but in my part of the country the last plans that weren't HDHPs were phased out in the late 2000s and seem unlikely to ever return.
