As lawmakers in Washington continue to battle over a children’s health insurance coverage program for the states, the Economic Policy Institute released a report that’s enough to make the workforce sick – that employer health insurance coverage of workers and their families continues to decline for the sixth year in a row, down from 68.3 percent to 62.9 percent.
In 2006, 47 million Americans were uninsured, up nearly 8.6 million since 2000, due in part to the erosion of employer-provided health coverage. The loss of coverage was greater for men than women, greater for Hispanics, followed by African Americans and greater declines for foreign-born workers compared to native-born.
The report, “The Erosion of Employment-Based Insurance” by EPI economist Elise Gould, outlines the overall declines in coverage along with a state-by-state analysis of coverage of workers and their children. It analyzed government data from the March Current Population Survey, 2001- 07.
In Missouri, employer health insurance dropped by nearly 3.7 percentage points, from 61.9 percent to 58.2 percent, a drop of 46,800 workers.
For Missouri children, numbers reveal an alarming drop by 10.4 percentage points – from 71.4 percent in 2000 to 61 percent in 2006. The figure equals 160,660 Missouri children without health coverage and the fourth largest decline in the nation.
“We think this is particularly timely because Pres. Bush and Gov. Blunt claim that it’s okay to cut Medicaid and S-CHIP coverage because Missourians can have access to private sector insurance,” said John Hickey, executive director of the Missouri Citizen Education Fund.
“This report shows that this is not true.”
S-CHIP refers to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program funded by the federal government.
Hickey said, “The private health insurance sector is abandoning both the children and adults here in the state of Missouri.”
For children, the overall rate of employer-provided health coverage fell 6.2 percentage points, from 65.9 percent to 59.7 percent between 2000 and 2006, affecting 3.4 million children.
The report said income provided the greatest disparities among children with employee-sponsored health coverage. Children whose household incomes were in the top 20 percent were nearly five times more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than children in the lowest 20 percent of household income.
“The costs just keep going up so fast, and employers are willing to take on some of the increase,” said Pat Gibbons, president of the St. Louis Association of Health Underwriters.
“But most of the increase is being passed on to the employees, and the employees can only afford so much.”
Faced with the financial strain, some workers are forced to settle on single coverage.
“The employees will take the coverage on themselves, because the employers normally pay 75 to 85 percent of the premium,” Gibbons said.
“In the dependent coverage, most of the employers normally do not pay anything at all. They just can’t afford to buy it through their group because it’s just too expensive.”
In addition to employer costs, Hickey identified two other reasons behind the decline in Missouri.
? The erosion of unions and thus jobs with bargained health insurance coverage, and
? The move from manufacturing to lower-paying service sector jobs with no benefits.
Although workers across the socio-economic spectrum experienced losses in employer-provide health coverage, the institute says uninsured workers are disproportionately young, non-white, with less education and lower wages.