Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Erosion Continues in 2008 and is Expected to Worsen

Abstract

Although employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is the primary source of health coverage in the United States, at 61.9 percent of the under-65 population, the rate of this coverage has decreased every year since 2000, when 68.3 percent had ESI. By 2008, the rate of ESI coverage had fallen 6.4 percentage points, and 5 million fewer people under the age of 65 had ESI in 2008 than in 2000. Because of these large declines in ESI, workers and their families have become uninsured at alarming rates; more than 7.5 million more Americans became uninsured after 2000. Uninsured workers are disproportionately young, Hispanic, lower educated, and lower income; however, workers across all socioeconomic groups have experienced declines in coverage since 2000. Children's coverage also fell 7.0 percentage points over the 2000s, and the gap in ESI access by income substantially widened over this period. The only reason the drop in ESI did not translate into a larger increase in the overall number of uninsured is that 3.4 million additional non-elderly people were covered by public insurance from 2007 to 2008. Because of the rise in unemployment between 2008 and 2010, the number without ESI and without any coverage at all is likely to swell in the coming years.