Employers will likely face health-care cost increases of 8.5% in 2012, but they'll mitigate that burden by pushing more costs onto employees and making other changes to benefits, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report finds.

Taking those plan changes into account, employers will see their health-care costs rise about 7%. (The report is based on a survey of about 1,700 employers, plus interviews with hospital execs and health-plan actuaries, among others.)

Putting...