Health insurance in the workplace won't go away because of thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But it will bedifferent.

That's the latest word from roughly 1,000 employers surveyed bythe International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

Though the new report found that employers are concerned aboutcost increases to health benefits next year as a result of reform,virtually all employers intend to keep their coverage for full-timeworkers in the wake of Obamacare.

The majority of employers (69%) say they will “definitely”continue to provide employer-sponsored health care when healthexchanges come online in 2014 — a 23 point increase from 2012.

Another quarter of respondents (25%) said they are “very likely”to continue their employer-sponsored coverage. The findings are afollow-up from preliminary results of the study released last month.

Opponents of President Obama's PPACA have argued that employerswill drop health coverage as an unintended consequence of the lawthat will negatively affect employees who want to stick with thecoverage they know and like.

Estimates have varied widely on just what reform will do toemployer-sponsored insurance, with some reports projecting 10-30%of employers will drop coverage. But more recent analyses —including from consulting firms Aon Hewitt and Towers Watson — suggested that figures are overblown.

In good news for brokers selling the plans, and employees whodepend on them, fewer than 3% of companies surveyed reported theywere at least somewhat unlikely to continue coverage of full-timeemployees.

More Changes on the Horizon

More than nine in 10 employers said they are past the “wait andsee” stage of planning, and 52% have begun to institute changes intheir benefits, according to the survey.

And their commitment to keep providing health care coveragecomes despite the fact that they believe reform is increasing theircosts.

Most employers (88%) already have seen cost increase because ofprovisions like the requirement that young adults can remaincovered on their parents' plans until they turn 26.

Health reform's requirement that companies with at least 50employees provide affordable health benefits is the primary reasonmost companies expect their spending on health insurance to rise in2014. They also believe that additional rules coming next year willfurther their spending.

As far as the cost impact, 47% estimate their 2013 costincreases — directly due to PPACA — to be less than 5%, while 41%estimate it to be more than 5%.

Nearly one in five employers has already increased participants'share of plan premiums and an additional quarter of respondentsplan to increase the portion that employees pay for their premiumsover the next year, the survey found.

Of those employers already planning to make changes, 24% areincreasing their emphasis on high-deductible health plans withhealth savings accounts, while an additional 14% are assessing thefeasibility of adding one.

Then there's the encouragement of healthy behaviors inemployees, with 19% of employers developing or expanding organizedwellness programs within the last year. Another 14% of employersadopted or expanded the use of financial incentives to encouragehealthier lifestyles within the past year, with another 25%planning to do so in the next year.

“We are seeing trends that indicate more changes may be on thehorizon,” Julie Stich, research director for the IFEBP, said in astatement.

Some of those big upcoming changes include more organizationslosing grandfathered status, and others redesigning their plans toavoid the 2018 excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans.

This article was originally posted at BenefitsPro.com, a sistersite of Credit Union Times.