The sides have been locked in negotiations for months, with the Patrick administration recently reaching agreement with two insurance carriers on lower rates.

“The Patrick-Murray Administration has taken decisive action to provide small businesses and working families with immediate relief from skyrocketing health insurance premiums,’’ the governor’s press secretary, Juan Martinez, said in a statement. He declined to directly address whether small businesses are increasingly dropping health coverage and directing their workers to subsidized care.

But analysts said the burden of double-digit insurance increases shouldered by small businesses over the last several years is likely to become more of a public problem.

“The more the employer insurance system unravels, the higher the cost is going to be for the state in providing subsidies to low income workers,’’ said Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a California-based think tank. “From a state finance perspective, stabilizing employer insurance is definitely important.’’

The state’s landmark 2006 health insurance overhaul included regulations designed to discourage low-wage employees from opting for state health insurance over their companies’ often more pricey coverage. It denied eligibility to any one whose employer had offered him or her coverage in the past six months and paid at least 33 percent toward the individual’s plan.

Most health care advocates and brokers had widely interpreted that to include even workers whose companies had dropped coverage. But recently, some companies that have terminated their group plans have tested those waters and found that their employees were accepted for state-subsidized coverage.

Additionally, company owners say, it has become far cheaper to pay the state penalty for not covering their workers — roughly $295 annually per employee — than to pay thousands more in premiums.

In New Bedford, the Early Learning Child Care center is now paying $1,500 quarterly in fines to the state, instead of the $30,000 it contributed quarterly toward 13 workers’ health insurance premiums. When Executive Director Judy Knox terminated the company’s health plan late last year, she asked Fields, the consultant, to help 10 of those workers enroll in Commonwealth Care. The other three went on spouses’ plans or were eligible for Medicare.

“We had had, in the three previous years, between 17 and 18 percent increases every year,’’ Knox said. “I was so worried about the staff and their coverage, but for most of them, Commonwealth Care seems to be working out very well.’’ The state program covers people with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Come 2014, when the bulk of the federal health care law goes into effect, the penalties for small companies that do not provide health insurance coverage will be less onerous than those in Massachusetts. That could tempt more small companies to opt out nationally, sending more workers to the public rolls — if health care costs can’t be restrained, some analysts said.

“Struggling business don’t necessarily feel the need to offer coverage to attract workers,’’ said Kaiser’s Levitt.

Massachusetts has not decided whether to adopt the federal rules for small businesses.

The federal law does not impose any penalty on companies with fewer than 50 employees that do not offer coverage, whereas in Massachusetts, employers with more than the equivalent of 11 full-time employees face fines for not offering a health plan and contributing at least 20 percent toward that coverage. But for companies with more than 50 workers, the federal law comes down a lot harder than does the state law.

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.