Employer Provided Insurance: Still Falling Fast

In the past, it was pretty much a given that if you had a full-time job that you would receive health insurance coverage from your employer. Simply put, this was how the majority of people obtained a policy for themselves and in many cases their family as well. But guess what? This is no longer the case. Even though a lot of companies still provide health insurance benefits, this trend is rapidly declining. Not only are a lot of companies cutting this out altogether, but many more are making employees pay for a large portion of their coverage.

As you can imagine, employees who are worried about losing their health insurance coverage are undergoing a lot of stress and anxiety. After all, insurance coverage is very important to most people; especially if they have a health related issue that needs constant care. This trend has led to many questions as to whether or not employers should be legally responsible for offering some type of health insurance coverage.

Why are more and more companies cutting out health insurance coverage? Simply put, they need to do this in order to stay afloat. With rising costs of health insurance, it is no longer affordable to offer coverage to employees. So what do companies do? They cut out this benefit altogether, which in turn helps their bottom line. Many analysts believe that this trend will continue until it is a rarity for employers to offer company sponsored health insurance. That is unless lawmakers step in and do something about this ever growing problem.

There are two important points that illustrate just how serious this problem has become.

1. In the year 2000, 69 percent of all employers were offering health insurance coverage to employees. This year, this number has fallen to 60 percent and is rapidly declining.
2. During the time span from 2001 to 2005, the number of uninsured workers in the United States increased by 3.4 million to a total of 19 million.

Although most employers do not want to cut out health insurance altogether, it is something that they must do in many cases just to stay in business. In order to buck this trend, many companies are attempting to at least offer to pay a portion of health insurance premiums. Unless lawmakers step in and make some major changes, this problem is going to continue to get worse.