Employers provided health insurance to 694,471 fewer Pennsylvanians in 2007 and 2008 than at the start of the decade, according to a new report analyzing U.S. Census data.
The Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center in Harrisburg jointly released the study, which found that Pennsylvania outstripped every state in the nation except Michigan in the loss of employer-sponsored health care between 2000-01 and 2007-08.
The report analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2008. State-level data are averaged over two years to reduce sampling error.
Nationally, the percentage of Americans under age 65 covered by an employer policy fell in each of the past eight years, going from 68.3% in 2000 to 61.9% in 2008. That amounts to 17 million fewer Americans insured by an employer policy today.
The number of Pennsylvania workers and their dependents with employment-based health insurance fell from 7,929,984 in 2000-01 to 7,235,512 in 2007-08 - a decline of 694,471. The rate of employer coverage in the commonwealth dropped from 75.9% in 2000-01 to 69.7% in 2007-08 - outstripping the national average decline during that period.
"The strong link between jobs and health care is eroding," said Sharon Ward, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. "Pennsylvanians who once relied on a job to bring family health coverage increasingly must look for other options."
"Congress must act soon to reform the health care system to make health care more affordable to employers and to families," she added.
Overall, Pennsylvania has a higher rate of employment-based coverage than the national average. Among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., the state ranked 10th in employer coverage rates in 2007-08.
Still, working Pennsylvanians are less likely to be insured by their employer today than they were seven years ago. In 2000-01, 82.5% of working Pennsylvanians were insured by their own employer, while in 2007-08, the rate dropped to 77.9% - a decline of 4.7 percentage points.
Pennsylvania also has seen a larger-than-the-national-average decline in the number of children covered by an employer policy. In 2007-08, 201,425 fewer Pennsylvania children were covered by employer policies than seven years before.