More employers are expected to try to hold down health plan costs by denying coverage to employees' spouses or imposing surcharges in situations when spouses are eligible for coverage from their own employers.

Such a trend has been going on for some time as a cost-cutting move and allows employers to direct corporate health care dollars to those most in need.

The design change received new attention last month when Louisville, Ky.-based package delivery giant United Parcel Service Inc. said employees' working spouses will lose health coverage next year, if they are eligible for coverage from their own employers.

Rising health care costs “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS said in a memorandum to employees.

It is easy to understand the motivation behind corporate moves to eliminate eligibility or boost health care premiums for employees' spouses who can obtain coverage elsewhere, experts say.

Because family coverage is much more expensive than employee-only coverage, employers can reap significant savings when spouses are not covered or pay premium surcharges when they are eligible for coverage through their own employers but don't take it.

For example, the average premium this year for employee-only coverage was $5,884, the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington said. Adding a spouse easily will double that premium, experts say.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also gives employers a further incentive to pare their health plan enrollment numbers.

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Starting next year under the law, employers have to pay a $63 reinsurance fee that is imposed for every health care plan participant. Revenue generated by the transitional reinsurance program fee will be used to partially reimburse insurers for covering high-cost individuals through health exchanges.

“Health care reform accelerates the move” to reduce plan enrollment numbers, said Amy Gordon, a partner at McDermott, Will & Emery L.L.P. in Chicago. The new reform law fees “are making employers more sensitive to plan costs.”

In addition, employers that reduce plan enrollments or add surcharges for spouses eligible for coverage through their own employers can use that money to keep the lid on premium increases for coverage for employees and their nonworking spouses.

“It is a way of making coverage more affordable to employees by not picking up the costs of those eligible for coverage elsewhere,” said Michael Thompson, a principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. in New York.

“This approach is fairer and more compassionate than requiring an employer's entire workforce to pay more,” said Tracy Watts, a senior partner with Mercer L.L.C. in Washington.

Still, there are downsides to denying coverage for working spouses.

“It can be an inconvenience for spouses and families. You add more complexity,” said Dave Ratcliffe, a principal at Buck Consultants L.L.C. in Washington. That complexity could arise in situations when working couples have to deal with two health insurers rather than one.

In addition, employers could lose a bit of a competitive edge by denying coverage to working spouses or imposing surcharges for spousal coverage, while other employers in their industries don't do the same, experts said.

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“Attraction and retention'' of highly skilled employees are important, Mr. Ratcliffe said.

For working spouses who are eligible for coverage through their own employers, the nation's largest employers have been more likely to take the surcharge approach.

For example, a Mercer survey found that 13% of employers with 10,000 or more employees imposed surcharges in such situations, compared with just 5% of employers with 500 to 4,999 employees.

Imposing and collecting surcharges is administratively more complex than denying coverage and large employers have greater resources to administer such a feature than smaller firms, Mercer's Ms. Watts said.

While the health care reform law may, at least in part, be a catalyst for the corporate move to deny coverage or add surcharges for employees' working spouses, the law does not impose any barriers to such approaches.

Effective Jan. 1, 2015, the law will require employers to provide affordable coverage to employees.

“That obligation does not extend to spouses,” said McDermott, Will & Emery's Ms. Gordon.