More small employers aren’t offering healthcare coverage for their workers, a drop that’s a key driver in the overall decline in the number of companies offering insurance, according to new data.
A study found that the total percentage of employers offering insurance fell to 45.7 percent in 2015, a 1.8 percentage point drop from 2014.
Larger employer offers of insurance increased by 1.2 percentage points to 96 percent in 2015 compared to 2014. But that was offset by small employers — only 29.4 percent of them offered insurance, a 2.8 percent drop.
Researchers found state-by-state variations in the insurance offers. For instance, Hawaii had the largest proportion of workers in jobs with employer-sponsored coverage, at 97 percent. Montana had the lowest rate with 66 percent.
The new data comes as Congress is eyeing capping tax breaks for employer-sponsored insurance as a way to pay for an Obamacare replacement.
The Affordable Care Act requires employers with 50 or more employees to offer insurance to all full-time workers, which the law defines as people that work 30 hours or more.
A major debate over the law centered on the impact on the economy and whether the mandate has cost jobs. Researchers culled the data from the Medical Panel Survey-Insurance Component created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
“Employer-sponsored coverage is the main source of health care coverage for Americans,” said Kathy Hempstead, senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which conducted the study. “Trends in this market segment continue to be stable overall, despite some decline in offer rates among smaller firms.”
Nationwide, 83.8 percent of workers in 2015 had jobs that offered insurance, and 75 percent of workers who were eligible for the offered coverage chose to enroll in it.
