Why Employer-Sponsored Insurance Coverage Changed, 1997-2003
By James D. Reschovsky, Bradley C. Strunk and Paul Ginsburg
Health Affairs
May/June 2006
Four and a half million Americans gained employer-sponsored health insurance coverage during 1997-2001, while nearly nine million lost coverage in the ensuing economic downturn (2001-2003), after population growth was accounted for. Macroeconomic trends affecting employment, job quality, and incomes drove most of the coverage changes, although key factors varied during the two periods. Take-up rates affected coverage, mostly reflecting the interaction of premium cost trends and labor-market tightness, but take-up also was influenced by the implementation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) during 1997-2001. Coverage among low-income people was most affected by economic conditions and premium costs.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/774
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
As if we didn’t have enough reasons to be concerned about using employer sponsorship as a basis for providing health insurance, this study clarifies several of the reasons behind one more important deficiency.
Employer sponsorship provides an unstable source of insurance coverage, in a large part due to factors beyond control of either the employer or the employee.
Once you are insured through an employer-sponsored plan, you have no assurance that you will remain covered until retirement, as this study and others demonstrate.
Once you are insured through an individual plan, you have no assurance that coverage will continue, especially since it has been shown that over two-thirds have left their plans by three years.
Once you are insured by Medicare after reaching age 65, you are assured that you will have coverage for the rest of your life. That’s stability.
We should all have a stable source of health care coverage, throughout life.
Only the government can make that possible.