Employer health insurance hits new low: Gallup
Geisinger Health System pediatrician Dr. James Zolla enters and reviews patient medical information in the Geisinger Health System electronic health records system at the Geisinger Clinic in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, October 28, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Brad Bower
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The percentage of Americans who have health insurance through their employer slipped to a new low of 44.5 percent in the third quarter, a drop of over 5 percentage points in three years, according to a poll released on Friday.
Pollsters at Gallup and Healthways Inc., who surveyed more than 90,000 U.S. adults, blamed the decline on high unemployment, under-employment and an increased number of employers who do not offer health insurance to their workers.
Employer-sponsored health insurance is one of the main pillars of the $2.6 trillion U.S. healthcare industry. But companies have increasingly scaled back benefits and raised employee charges to cope with healthcare costs that are rising sharply despite anemic economic growth.
The latest figure was 5.3 percentage points below a high of 49.8 percent in 2008, when the two companies began tracking trends in employer-sponsored health insurance.
"The health insurance system in the United States is experiencing numerous changes. Governments and businesses have and will continue to cut back and/or reform their health coverage offerings," the pollsters said in a statement.
Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc announced in October that it would no longer offer health insurance to new part-time employees and slashed its contributions to employee health expense accounts.
As employer-sponsored insurance declined, the number of adults with no health insurance at all rose 2.7 percentage points to 17.3 percent in the third quarter.
There was also an increase in the ranks of those covered by government plans from Medicaid, Medicare and military programs, which was up 2.2 percentage points since 2008 at 25.1 percent but off a 2010 high of 25.7 percent.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, there were 41 million uninsured American adults and 24 million adults below retirement age on the national Medicaid program for low-income people and other public insurance plans in 2010. Medicare, the federal healthcare program for the elderly, covers an estimated 48 million beneficiaries.
The survey found higher health insurance coverage among young people aged 18 to 26, which pollsters attributed to a provision of the U.S. healthcare overhaul that allows parents to cover grown children under their insurance plans.
But other segments of the law, including tax credits for small businesses, did not appear to be help older adults, aged 25 to 64, whose uninsured ranks increased.
Conducted July 1 to September 30, the survey has a 1 percentage point margin of error.
(Editing by Jackie Frank)
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The state was waiting for $45 million dollars in reimbursement from
the federal government. Evidently, Wisconsin (as well as many other states) had paid medical expenses for people that the federal government improperly enrolled into SSI when they should have been enrolled into SSDI. The federal government agrees that the money is owed to the states, yet two other states filed lawsuits for their reimbursement and didn’t get anywhere. Then some fed bills were tried, and didn’t get anywhere.
And just a few weeks ago, Sebelius wrote in a letter to the National Association of State Medicaid Directors, “I have carefully explored this option but, unfortunately, I do not have the statutory authority.”
This Sebelius line is a direct slam….because (ALSO just recently) she was severely criticized because she just hauled off and sent New Hampshire’s Planned Parenthood $1.8 million check because that state cut their funding of that group. Critics were blasting that Sebelius wasn’t Congress and in control of the purse strings. So, she comes out with this statement to the directors, as if she was all democratic and everything.
The federal tax dollars aren’t being managed very well, and as a result
states like Wisconsin are suffering…Poor people on Medicaid are suffering.
Wisconsin had to cut Medicaid funding, which in turn means reducing the number of people who can qualify for Medicaid.
AND who is getting blamed? Not the culprits wasting tax dollars, like
Sebelius and her goal to federally fund abortion against the will of the people and Obama whose flying in AirForce 1 endlessly for no reason, burning our dollars in jet fuel.
Well, the Wisconsin Medicaid cut needs Obama and Sebelius to sign off
and grant a waiver, OTHERWISE, the limit to qualify for Medicaid has to dig deeper to 133% of poverty level, instead of 200% of poverty.
We also have another culprit that isn’t getting blamed—the health care industry whose inflation rate has been 300% to 500% greater than the regular inflation rate. (Oh, they held the line this past year, but still were clocking along, grabbing more and more of our dwindling GDP —not wanting a quarter of it—-but going toward 1/3 of GDP!)
Between China interest and health costs, the American citizen won’t be able to afford even dirt to eat.
Let us put the blame for this where it squarely belongs!
The media can help and it is their moral obligation to do so.
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