You’ve no doubt seen news reports of Americans seeking medical care abroad. They’re either uninsured, underinsured, or simply trying to save money by having surgery in Latin America, Thailand, or India. As you might have guessed this trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by corporate America seeking to save money on their health care or insurance carriers hoping to roll out a new product.

According to a recent report by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, 11% of surveyed employers cover medical tourism. Those surveyed were Certified Employee Benefits Specialists and therefore part of large organizations. However, don’t be surprised to see this trend extend beyond the very large companies to others seeking to find another way to control costs.

A couple of other interesting findings from the survey included the increase in coverage (from 1999-2007) in other types of care that haven’t been considered mainstream. Acupuncture coverage increased from 14% to 34%, massage therapy 8% to 13.5%, and nutrition therapy 5% to 12.8%.

Employers contemplating cutting back on medical benefits might want to mull this: A new survey shows that workers place an extremely high value on health care coverage.

In fact, according to a survey of 1,200 adults sponsored by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, 84 percent of the respondents said that health insurance has become a “very important” characteristic when choosing a new job.

In fact, medical insurance outranked all other 14 benefits and offerings in the survey. Remarkably, pay ranked 10th on the survey—right below “being creative and intellectually stimulated.”

Another benefit—the corporate pension plan—ranked fourth, cited by 76 percent of respondents as being most important when evaluating a potential job.

Cost increases for U.S. group health care plans continue to hold steady as more employers take steps to keep spending under control. Most often, employer healthcare spending controls results in higher employee out of pocket spending via higher copays and deductibles. 

Unfortunately it’s the small employers with under 200 employees that feel the rising premium affects the worse and as a result fewer and fewer are able to afford to offer employee healthcare benefits.

Group health plan costs increased 6.1 percent this year to an average of $7,983 per employee, up from $7,523 last year, according to a survey of nearly 3,000 employers released last month by Mercer.

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