Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Billions on Public Health for Full-time Workers, Pt2 -- Why is this?

These mounting costs to the public for lack of employer health insurance are because of a large dropout in those who once had employee health insurance. It may be perceived that this rapid increase is due to the plight of small businesses not large enough to provide coverage, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s been found that the most rapidly-growing sector comes from those working for larger firms of 100 or more employees. Even though this effect has increased for all sizes of firms, the larger firms represent the fastest growing between the years1999 and 2004.  By 2004 the numbers of those from larger firms enrolling in public health insurance programs had rose to around 3 million people.  The figure had doubled since 1999.

Between 1999 and 2004 the costs of publicly paid health care for full-time workers and their families increased by $14 billion (from $31 billion in to $45 billion). Of this, $11.3 billion was for health insurance (from $21.2 billion to $32.5 billion). The other $2.6 billion was for uncompensated health care (from $9.4 billion to $12 billion). Of course, small businesses are much more likely to not offer employee health insurance. That, notwithstanding, there is a higher rate of increase in those not having it found in the larger firms (100 workers or more). From 1.2 million employees who were without it in 1999 to 1.6 million in 2004. This 33% increase of those without, including family members, adds up to nearly 5 million additional people without employee health insurance in 2004 vs. 4 million in 1999.

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