Summary
Views on Employment-Based Health Benefits: Findings from the 2013 Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey
• Most workers are satisfied with the health benefits they have now and express little interest in changing the current mix of benefits and wages offered by their employers. If current tax preferences for employment-based health benefits were to change, and the benefits were to become taxable, 39 percent of individuals say they would continue with their current level of coverage, virtually unchanged from 40 percent in 2012 but up from 31 percent who indicated that preference in 2011.
• Despite expressing a desire for more choice of health plans, individuals are not highly comfortable that they could use an objective rating system, such as that provided by the health insurance exchanges, to choose health insurance, nor are they extremely confident that a rating system could help them choose the best health insurance.
How Much Would it Take? Achieving Retirement Income Equivalency between Final-Average-Pay Defined Benefit Plan Accruals and Voluntary Enrollment 401(k) Plans in the Private Sector
• Previous EBRI research reported on a comparative analysis of future benefits from private-sector, voluntary enrollment (VE) 401(k) plans and stylized, final-average-pay defined benefit (DB) plans.
• Rather than trying to reflect the real-world variation in DB accruals, the baseline analysis used the median accrual rate in the sample (1.5 percent of final compensation per year of participation) as the stylized value for the baseline counterfactual simulations.
• The current research expands the previous research by computing that actual final-average DB accrual that would be required to provide an equal amount of retirement income at age 65 as would be produced by the annuitized value of the projected sum of the 401(k) and IRA rollover balances.