Large Companies Cutting Workers’ Health Insurance

Thirty-two percent of workers lacking health coverage in 2001 were employed by large firms (those with 500 or more workers) or were dependents of those employees, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund released last month.

“The Growing Share of Uninsured Workers Employed by Large Firms,” co-written by Sherry Glied, Ph.D., and Sarah Little of Columbia University and Jeanne Lambrew, Ph.D., of George Washington University, found that the 2001 figure represents an increase from the 25 percent of employees at large firms who lacked insurance in 1987.

According to the authors, the findings are particularly troubling because large companies traditionally have been the most likely to offer health benefits.

The researchers also found that uninsured rates at large businesses were three times higher for low-income employees (below 200 percent of the federal poverty level) than for middle- or higher-income employees.

The trend is likely to accelerate, according to the 2003 Annual Survey of Employer Health Benefits, released in September by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust (Psychiatric News, October 17).

The survey reported that between spring 2002 and spring 2003, monthly premiums for employer-sponsored insurance rose 13.9 percent, the third consecutive year of double-digit premium increases and the highest premium increase since 1990.

Fifty-one percent of large-firm (200 employees and above) employers reported that they were “very likely” to increase the amount employees pay for insurance next year. Three percent of such employers planned to restrict employee eligibility for coverage, and 1 percent expected to drop coverage entirely.

“The Growing Share of Uninsured Workers Employed by Large Firms” is posted on the Web at www.cmwf.org/programs/insurance/glied_largefirms_672.pdf. ▪