Employer-Sponsored Health Care Fact Sheet

November 16, 2010

Fewer Americans are covered by an employer health insurance policy.

• The share of Americans under age 65 covered by employment-based health insurance eroded for the ninth year in a row, falling from 61.9% in 2008 to 58.9% in 2009. In 2000, 68.3% of Americans under age 65 were covered by an employer policy.
• As many as 25 million more people under 65 would have had employer-sponsored health insurance in 2009 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.
• Lower-income Americans have been the hardest hit: the coverage rate for the bottom 20% of income earners dropped by about 11 percentage points, while for the top 20%, it declined by 3.1 percentage points.

Pennsylvania second only to Michigan in loss of employer coverage.

• In Pennsylvania, 876,484 fewer people were insured by an employer in 2008-09 than eight years before. That number went from 7,929,984 in 2000-01 to 7,053,500 in 2008-09. Only Michigan saw a larger number decline.
• The rate of employer-sponsored health care in Pennsylvania also declined. It went from 75.9% in 2000-01 to 67.6% in 2008-09 – an 8.4-percentage-point drop.
• The percentage of Pennsylvania workers insured by their own employer declined. In 2000-01, 82.5% of Pennsylvania workers were insured by their employer, and in 2008-09, it declined to 76.2%. The national average of workers insured by their employer went from 74.4% in 2000-2001 to 69.1% in 2008-09.
• Despite declines in employer coverage, Pennsylvania has a higher rate of residents insured by an employer policy than the national average. In 2008-09, Pennsylvania ranked 11th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the percentage of residents insured by an employer policy.

While more Pennsylvania children lose employer coverage, their rates of coverage remain steady.

• In Pennsylvania, 260,399 fewer children received employer health care in 2008-09 than eight years before. Between 2000-2001 and 2008-09, the percentage of children covered by an employer policy went from 74.3% to 64.8% – a decline of 9.6 percentage points.
• Nationally, there was a decline of 7.8 percentage points in employer coverage for children during the same period (65.2% to 57.4%).
• Despite these declines, the number and rate of uninsured children in Pennsylvania has remained the same over the course of the decade – at about 200,000. This is likely due to the growth in the number of children enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP. Since 2000-01, the share of the population with coverage through those public programs grew from 10% to 15.7%.