Study: Increase In Health Insurance Premiums Dissuade Employees and Employers From Getting and Offering Coverage
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A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report showed a more than double increase in health insurance premiums led to employers dropping coverage and kept employees from getting any kind of coverage.
According to the study, in 2011, 60 percent of New Jersey’s private employers offered health coverage to their employees – this was a four percent decrease from 2001.
Business owners who provided insurance to their employees demanded they carry a larger burden of the cost. In 2011, individuals paid more than $1,100 in premiums; families paid more than $3,700. That’s about three times more than what was they used to pay 10 years before.
In 2000, more than three-quarters (81 percent) of employees who were provided health coverage actually got it. 10 years later, just three-quarters enroll in some kind of health insurance coverage.
According to the foundation’s senior vice president John Lumpkin, the trend is likely to last although the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is giving workers some other options.
For example, all states will be equipped with a health exchange – an Internet marketplace that allows people and employers to shop for health insurance coverage.
New Jersey Policy Perspective Senior Policy Analyst Raymond Castro said employees that qualify for subsidies will get assistance meeting the insurance premiums should they be paying over 9.5 percent of their work salary to the employer’s plan.
Castro said Obamacare isn’t very popular with small businesses that do qualify for tax credits – no cash – if they provide coverage.
Christine Stearns, New Jersey’s Business and Industry Association’s vice president for health affairs, said the report’s results are not surprising. Each year, the association’s members say health care cost is the biggest challenge they must deal with and tackle.
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