Health Care Issues In Today's Environment

The costs to working families of the recession and jobless recovery have been amply documented in terms of jobs, wages, and incomes . Various factors have led to a related problem for working families: the loss of employer-provided health care coverage. This is on of the main health care policy issues of our generation.

Various reports examine the erosion of employer-based coverage since 2000, with an emphasis on the characteristics of those who have lost coverage.

Although unemployment has increased and the labor market has shrunk over this period, the loss of jobs cannot explain all of the decline in employer health care coverage as a health care policy issue.

Jobholders also experienced a drop in coverage from 58.9% to 56.4%, a change of 2.5 percentage points. This decline may be the result of a few trends: the slack in the labor market that has weakened workers' bargaining power or steep increases in health care costs that are being passed to employers and employees in the form of higher premiums and lower take-up rates.

A widespread loss of health care coverage was revealed by an examination of the recent data, regardless of the causes. Predictably, those with the least education or income lost ground, but so did those with college degrees and higher incomes. Children were particularly likely to lose employer-based coverage, although many of those from poorer families have been picked up by publicly provided insurance.