Yikes–too much to report today! Two confirmations today about employer health insurance confirm much of what I’ve posted about before. First, the Commonwealth Fund reports that a growing share of uninsured workers are employed by large firms. More noticeably, low-income workers (those under 200% of poverty) at big companies are much, much more likely to be uninsured than higher income workers in big companies–46% of those in all. Yup, this means those folks who work at McDonalds, cleaning companies, supermarket chains, home health aides, etc, etc, and the people who are the targets of California SB2.
Meanwhile, Harris Interactive’s latest poll for the WSJ Online (not online yet but you can get on the email list here) confirms the deep emotional connection between employees and health benefits. 56% of employees say that they would rather have no pay increase but a maintenance of current health benefits as opposed to a decent pay increase but a significant reduction in their health benefits.
In other words not enough people are getting insurance at work, fewer are getting it each year (especially the working poor), but employees are loathe to lose that coverage.
Categories: Uncategorized