Jonathan Douglass' daughter, Alyssa, spends several days at Arkansas Children's Hospital at least four times a year. Sometimes she stays longer when she has a flare up from her Crohn's Disease, a chronic illness that affects the lining of the digestive tract.
Alyssa, 14, must also take two different types of medicines regularly that will have a combined price of about $680 a month when Douglass' new health insurance plan offered by his employer, Windstream Holdings Inc., goes into effect next year.
Faced with Alyssa's hospital visits and medicine costs, Douglass said regular doctor appointments -- at about $110 to $200 a visit -- will become rare for the rest of the family.
"We aren't going to go," he said.
Douglass, who works for Windstream in Texarkana, is one of many Americans seeing their employers move to health insurance plans that offer cheaper premiums but pricey deductibles, leading employees to pay more out-of-pocket when they fall ill.
The higher deductible plans, adopted by many businesses, are designed to have workers pay for more of their medical costs and to reduce the cost of premiums, analysts said.
But some experts say that the shift to high deductible plans can make health care less affordable and will lead to employees forgoing care, even when they need treatment for serious conditions.
"It's a way in which workers contribute more to the cost of the plan," said Matthew Rae, senior policy analyst at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. "The idea is that you will defer or reduce utilization [of care] to help reduce costs."
Health insurance deductibles have steadily increased 67 percent since 2010, and easily outpace employee wages that have increased only 10 percent over the same time, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Foundation and analysts.
The average deductible rose from about $518 in 2003 to about $1,300 in 2014.
In Arkansas, deductibles have grown at a slightly slower rate, rising from about $619 in 2003 to $1,000 in 2014, said Sara Collins, vice president of health care coverage and access for The Commonwealth Fund.
About 40 percent of people who have deductibles that are high compared to their income, have said in recent surveys that they didn't seek health care when needed because of the costs, Collins said.
"We're also seeing the tendency for consumers, particularly those with lower incomes to not get care," Collins said.
Under the health insurance plan currently offered by Windstream -- which expires at the end of the year -- deductibles range from $500 to $6,000 for a single plan and $1,000 to $12,000 for a family plan.
When the company's new health insurance plan starts next year, annual deductibles for single employees will range from $2,000 to $6,300. For the company's family plan, the deductibles range from $4,000 to $12,600.
"Windstream, like many other companies, is working hard to navigate the fast-changing and increasingly costly healthcare market," spokesman David Fish said in an email.
"With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Windstream is not alone in making a shift to consumer plans. A quarter of employers will provide them as their sole healthcare offering in 2016, and over half of all employees expect to enroll in a consumer plan," he said. After considering its current health insurance plans and "evaluating the healthcare landscape, the company decided the consumer-based plan design provides the best option to deliver cost effective, pre-tax coverage to employees."
Jonathan Douglass, the Windstream customer service technician, stood outside Windstream's headquarters in Little Rock last week with other members of the Communications Workers of America union to protest the company's shift to the new plan.
He said that come Jan. 1, when the new health insurance plan takes effect, one of his daughter's medicine will go from $80 for a three-month supply to $480 for a month's supply. The other will go from a $10 prescription for a three-month supply to about $200 a month.
"I've started to put money back for her prescriptions," Douglass said.
SundayMonday Business on 11/22/2015