Employer-provided insurance continues to decline

Source: USA Today

The percentage of people with health insurance through their employers — traditionally the way most people get coverage — is continuing to shrink, raising anxiety among workers and invigorating a debate about whether insurance should be tied to jobs.

Many of those who get their coverage through their jobs are becoming less secure that those benefits will always be there.

"It's going to disappear," says Angela Ruggiero of North Port, Fla., who lost her insurance when she and her husband changed jobs. "There's no way employers can continue to pay premiums if they continue increasing."

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The percentage of all employers offering health insurance in the past eight years peaked in 2000 at 69% and has fallen steadily since, hitting 60% this year, according to an annual survey of employers by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Among small firms of three to nine workers, the percentage offering insurance has dropped even more — from 58% in 2001 to 45% this year.





Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2007-11-12-social-net_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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Another reason this election is one of the most important ever!

Clearly it's all Clinton's fault. Even the number of insured citizens is obscene.

And with the introduction of individual mandate programs, the race out the door will become a stampede. Meanwhile nothing will be done to eliminate the obscene administrative overhead charged by health insurance providers, health care costs will continue to spiral out of control, and we will continue to have the worlds most expensive mediocre healthcare system.

Health Care for All would eliminate any and all stories like this.

Most people have already forgotten that GM moved many of its jobs out of the USA in order to avoid paying for the benefits.

And Universal Health Care - Single Payer style would have kept those jobs here.

If you say every employer has to pay for every worker, at first glance a fair notion, you are guaranteeing that those in their late forties on up will find it even HARDER to find jobs.
Employers do just not want this age group on their insurance rolls.

I see the effects of this all the time. At both banks where I bank, the tellers are almost all under the age of thirty.

Of necessity, unregulated providers will dump all but the most profitable clients. Meanwhile, their lobbyists will be writing legislation to criminalize making claims.

and hospitals will have to raise profits higher on the ones who can pay to accomadate the ones who can't

Universal Health is on its way

small employers is probably 5%, not 45%