Fewer employers offer health benefits: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer U.S. employers are offering health benefits, mostly because many new small employers have chosen not to pay for health insurance, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported on Monday.

The GAO found an 8 percentage point drop in the share of small employers offering benefits from 2001 to 2006 and said many employers that offer health benefits now make workers pay a higher share of out-of-pocket costs.

Some also have begun offering consumer-directed health plans, which trade lower premiums for significantly higher deductibles, or mini-medical plans that provide more limited coverage at lower premiums, the GAO said.

"While the share of large employers offering health benefits remained fairly constant between 2001 and 2006 at about 98 percent, the share of small employers (with 3-199 employees) offering them dropped from 68 percent to 60 percent," the GAO said in its report.

"Health policy experts from one organization we interviewed told us this decline is likely due to new employers choosing not to offer coverage rather than existing employers dropping coverage," the GAO added.

"Some of these recent changes to health benefits may particularly affect low-wage workers who are less able to afford higher out-of-pocket costs, and less healthy workers who use more health services," added the GAO, which wrote the report at the request of Congress.

The workers losing coverage are probably those the least likely to be able to bargain for it, the GAO found. "Survey data indicate that from 2001 through 2005, eligibility for health coverage and the extent to which workers are covered have both declined most among low-wage workers," it said.

At least 46 million Americans have no health insurance at all. Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid provide health insurance for the poor, disabled and elderly.