CHICAGO – Americans with health insurance financed by private employers fell in 2003, compared with two years earlier, a survey released Tuesday said.
Roughly 63 percent of Americans under the age of 65 got health coverage through their employers in 2003, down from 67 percent in 2001, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change survey.
The center is a nonpartisan research group funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Expansion of publicly financed health insurance like Medicaid staved off a correspondingly big hike in the rolls of the uninsured during the period, the study said.
As private insurance is expected to continue its decline, government coverage can't be counted on to provide a safety net in the future, the authors noted. At present, about 43 million Americans have no health insurance coverage.
"The long-term trends of declining employer coverage and increasing uninsurance will likely continue," said Paul Ginsburg, president of the center.
Much of the decline in employer-sponsored health insurance can be blamed on the recession and accompanying loss of jobs. But double-digit increases in health-care costs are also a culprit.
Health-insurance premiums – driven by costs for hospitals, prescription drugs and doctors, rose 13.9 percent in 2003, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Medical care costs are soaring at more than double the rate of overall inflation, with most of the costs borne by big employers and government.
The findings resulted from a national telephone and in-person survey.
