Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Scaled-Back Health Insurance in Nevada, Pt.2 --  A new strategy.

Previous…

On a larger scale, a Glenview, Ill. paycheck-processing company called SurePayroll conducted a recent national survey on small businesses that offer employee health insurance. The survey showed that the whole segment of small businesses in this country (those having 100 employees or less) offering employee health insurance has dropped 32% in one year and now stands at only 44%. This leaves well over half of our nation’s workers employed by small businesses without employee health insurance.

Enter – the new strategy: It turns out that many of these employees who are lucky enough to hold on to employee-based health insurance, don’t come out unscathed. A UnitedHealth Group subsidiary of the Golden Rule Insurance Co. spokeswoman named Ellen Laden explains that those people are left facing “restricted plans that don't insure dependents.” How serious is this? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation “70 percent of uninsured Nevadans either work or live with a full-time worker.” This implies that a large percentage of those without health insurance are probably children.

So private health insurance companies, like Ms. Laden’s are planning to start offering private plans to Nevada residents. This situation explains the influx of this new strategy of private insurers. Ms. Laden provides us with these figures: “About 19 million Americans buy their own health plans today, up from 17 million two years ago.” Right now over 15% of our nation is without health insurance. Things are even worse in Nevada where the percentage is up to 21%. That’s, roughly, 456,000 Nevada residents, this figure from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Continued…