Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is $6382
I’m working on a talk on employer sponsored health insurance and low wage workers (for the Ernest Haddad Lecture at Mass General next month). I’ll have more to say on this over the coming weeks – but I wanted to share some information from last fall’s Kaiser Family Foundation Health Research Education Trust report on employer sponsored health insurance. These come out every September – and the amount of data can be crushing – I hadn’t noticed this chart until I was doing specific research on this topic.
KFF HRET researchers divided employers up into those who had few low wage workers (<35 and="" below="" had="" income="" low="" many="" those="" wage="" who="" workers="">35% of employees had income <$23,000). Employees in companies with more low wage workers pay more a larger share of the health insurance premium than employees at firms with higher wages on average. This gap has grown over the last 5 years.
As a result:
· 29% of workers at firms with more low wage workers pay more than half of the health insurance premium; this is only 14% at firms with higher wage workers
· 65% of workers at firms with few low wage workers are covered by their employers’ health plan; only 46% are so covered at firms with more low wage workers
· This is in issue for certain industries. In retail, only 34% of employees are covered by their employer’s plan – this compares to 80% of government workers, 77% in finance, 78% in manufacturing, and 79% in transportation and utilities. (We would never expect 100% coverage, as some employees obtain coverage through a spouse’s employer.
This is deeply troubling- almost half of those who are uninsured remain uninsured because the price of health insurance is too high. The Affordable Care Act has some protection against employer sponsored insurance being unaffordable; employers face a penalty if the cost of health insurance is more than 9% of income. It appears that might not be enough. Thanks to Andrea Christopher, MD (HSPH’16) for pointing this graphic out to me:
