Even though it won’t go into effect until 2018, the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac Tax” — a 40% excise tax on high-cost health plans is already driving large employers to adjust to it. This is putting the squeeze on workers, Tevi Troy, president of the American Health Policy Institute, writes in The Wall Street Journal [subscription required]:

Almost 90% of large employers surveyed by AHPI reported taking steps to prevent their company from having a plan that triggers the excise tax in 2018.

Nineteen percent of those surveyed — top human-resource officers at companies with more than 1,000 employees — said they were already curtailing or eliminating employee contributions to flexible-spending accounts to avoid triggering the tax. Nearly 13% were already curtailing or eliminating employee contributions to health savings accounts. Both FSAs and HSAs are popular ways for employees to cope with the increasing number of high-deductible health plans, as they allow workers to save for growing out-of-pocket health costs.

Read the article “Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Already Putting Squeeze on Employee Health Plan Choices” on uschamber.com.