Trends in Employment-Based Coverage Among Workers, and Access to Coverage Among Uninsured Workers, 1995-2011

This paper examines the state of employment-based health benefits, updating prior EBRI research that examined trends in coverage on a monthly basis, over the time period from December 1995 to July 2011. Examining these data on a monthly basis allows a more accurate identification of changes in trends, and can also more clearly indicate the effects of recession and employment on coverage. Trends in offer rates and reasons for being uninsured among uninsured workers are also examined. Between December 2007-August 2009, the percentage of workers with employment-based coverage in their own name fell from 60.4 percent to 55.9 percent, recovering to 56.5 percent by December 2009. However, by April 2011, the percentage of workers with employment-based coverage had slipped back to 55.8 percent. Most uninsured workers reported that they did not have coverage because of cost: anywhere from 70 percent to 90 percent over the December 1995-July 2011 period. Between December 1995 and early 1997, uninsured workers citing cost as a reason for that status increased from about 73 percent to 84 percent, and then settled in the low-80 percent range through 1999. An economic expansion in 2000 resulted in an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, while the percentage of workers reporting cost as a reason for not having coverage fell to 71.5 percent. However, the percentage of uninsured workers reporting cost as a reason for not having coverage started increasing in late 2000, and continued to do so during the 2001 recession. That percentage remained in the low-80 percent range through 2003, and then jumped to the mid-80 percent range through 2007. It dropped again to about 77 percent in mid-2008 but then rose sharply during the latest recession, reaching 86 percent by May 2009, continuing to climb to 90 percent by June 2011. Uninsured workers reporting that they were not offered employment-based health benefits totaled roughly 40 percent from the mid-1990s through 2003, reaching 23 percent in mid-2011.The PDF for the above title, published in the May 2012 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the fulltext of another May 2012 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: “Retirement Income Adequacy for Boomers and Gen Xers: Evidence from the 2012 EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model®.”