New Insurance Study: Number of Insured Workers Dropping
It’s not just the unemployed facing healthcare insurance problems, according to a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report compiling research carried out by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota. Nearly 20% of American workers have no health insurance, up from around 14% in the mid-1990s.
During the mid-1990s, one in seven American workers had no insurance. Just ten years later, that figure has increased to one in five workers uninsured, or around six-million more people over the mid-1990s total.
What’s causing the high rates of uninsured workers?
What has caused the drop in insurance rates? The study notes that it’s likely due to an increase in the cost of insurance – premium costs for employer-sponsored healthcare have increased up to eight times faster than wages, meaning that fewer employers and fewer workers can afford the coverage.
Another fact the study notes is that many workers are newly uninsured, and the percentage of uninsured workers has risen sharply in the last couple of years. Finally, while up to 20% of workers no longer have insurance, around 90% of children are covered, as well as almost all retirees.
Criticism of the health insurance statistics
Some have criticized the statistics and the healthcare system on the basis of the disparity of insurance rates between workers and retirees – saying that workers are paying the bill for coverage for people who are no longer working. But is this really fair?
Today’s retirees – the people who are now on Medicare – are the taxpayers of the last generation. They’ve already paid for the healthcare they’re now receiving. And the current generation of tax-paying workers is paying now for the Medicare they’ll receive when they hit retirement age.
The real problem is that there just aren’t any insurance safety nets for working adults. SCHIP provides coverage for children and young people, while Medicare provides for seniors. For working adults, however, the options tend to be limited to employer-sponsored care, private insurance, or nothing at all.
More significant in terms of the study’s statistics is the fact that the mid-2000s figures were taken from Census 2007 results – and given current trends it’s likely that the number of uninsured workers is actually much higher than one in five.
photo credit: aflcio2008
