Portion of workforce covered by employer-provided health coverage down
Boston Globe reports: “Fewer get workplace health plans: Premiums rise, coverage drops over decade.”
“Americans who receive health insurance through their employers have dropped to less than one- half of all workers from about two-thirds a decade ago . . ..” A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found 45 percent of US employees have health insurance at work, down from 63 percent in 1993. “But . . . the data may overstate the trend, in part because of coverage shifts within two-income families.”
(I couldn’t find this particlular study on the BLS site, which is a gold mine of information. Perhaps it just hasn’t been posted yet. I did find an interesting reference to a paper entitled “the Consequences of Employer Linked Health Insurance Coverage in the United States,” stating: “The usual arrangement for health insurance coverage in the U.S. today links health insurance policies to employers. Recently, a few economists have suggested that this arrangement is inefficient, insofar as individuals pass up opportunities to work in preferred jobs due to a fear that their current level of health insurance coverage would be reduced in a new job.”)
Factors cited by the Globe:
1) “[S]oaring insurance premiums and the inability of workers and small employers to afford the increasingly costly coverage.” (75 percent increase in premiums paid by employees over the past decade, outpacing wages or inflation.)
I suspect employers have seen similar percentage increases, if not more, and have only partially succeeded in passing increases along to employees.
2) “Shifts in the composition of the US work force.” “Manufacturing employment has dropped steadily, and there has been a rise in the percentage of workers employed by service companies, which are less likely to offer health coverage . . .. While half of workers in blue-collar jobs have health insurance, only 22 percent of low-wage workers are covered in service occupations such as waitresses, dental assistants, security guards, or childcare workers . . ..”
3) “[T]he recent economic decline also caused coverage to fall.”
Soapbox: There’s no logical connection between health insurance and employment. Why should employers provide it? This is just a custom that originated when employers could buy it cheaply enough that substituting new health coverage for part of a wage increase was economically beneficial to both employers and employees. No longer true for many employers. It’s time to cut the connection, and substitute something better, thus freeing employers from the expensive hassle of negotiating healthcare coverage, ensuring all Americans have access to coverage, and freeing employees to work where they please. And don’t ask me how . . .
