TORONTO—Provincial governments should take measures to prohibit the unintended transfer of costs to individual or group insurance plans if private health insurance for medical services covered by public plans is offered, according to a survey of Canadian corporations by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

About 74% of surveyed plan sponsors said the provinces should take some measures to prevent unintended cost shifting, while 7% said they did not think the governments should take such measures, according to the survey.

"I think plan sponsors as a community would like to see some sort of regulations or legislation that would protect them," said Brian Lindenberg, principal and leader of the Health & Benefits professional group at Mercer. "I'm not sure how practical that is."

Major changes being proposed in Canada's publicly funded health care system could potentially result in some shifting of health care costs to employers. For example, Quebec is conducting a public consultation on its proposal to pay private health care providers to perform certain medical procedures for which there is a long waiting list in the public system and allow private insurance to cover these procedures.

Sixty percent of Canadian companies have not yet reviewed the terms of their employee benefit plans and their contractual obligations in light of the private insurance options, but intend to do so soon, according to the survey.

Only 11% of companies have done a full audit and are protected against unintended cost shifting, and 7% are making changes to protect plans from unintended cost shifting from the provinces, the study found.

About 13% said they had not done an audit and do not think it's necessary.

The survey also found that 39% of employers said they would consider including private insurance coverage as an option on an employee-pay-all basis, and 14% said they would consider including such coverage as an option on a cost-shared basis. About 20% of employers, though, said they would probably not consider including such coverage, and 10% said they definitely would not consider including the coverage.