03 August 2004

9 million have lost health insurance since 2001

WASHINGTON -- The share of people who got health insurance through their job declined by 9 million between 2001 and 2003, a new study finds.

The report by the Center for Studying Health System Change found that just 63 percent of Americans under age 65 got health coverage through an employer in 2003, compared with 67 percent two years earlier.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan center does a nationally representative survey of health-care coverage every other year. It takes a sample of 25,400 families, including more than 46,000 people.

Because of a recession, there was a notable drop in the proportion of families with at least one worker in 2003, according to the survey, to about 81.4 percent, nearly 3 percent lower than two years before.

ìWhile the economic downturn reduced employment and accounted for much of the decline in employer coverage, the rapidly rising cost of health insurance, which increased about 28 percent between 2001 and 2003, likely contributed to the decline as well,î said Bradley Stunk, a researcher with the center who co-authored the study.

While all age groups saw a decline in coverage, children as well as adults between the ages of 19 and 39 were particularly affected. The proportion of young adults with coverage from work declined from nearly 65 percent to 59.4 percent.

About half of this loss for young adults was offset by growth in public insurance enrollment for the age group, from 5.5 percent to 8.3 percent. But the percentage of young adults who were uninsured still rose from 21.2 percent to 23.8 percent during the period.

Among children under 18, employer coverage fell from 63.4 percent to 59.5 percent, but there was an increase in coverage from public programs, from 17.6 percent in 2001 to 24.1 percent in 2003.

Low-income children -- those living in families with income below 200 percent of poverty, or $36,800 for a family of four -- saw the biggest gains in public coverage, rising from 37.9 percent in 2001 to 49.3 percent in 2003, or a jump of nearly 5 million youngsters.

ìClearly, public insurance expansions provided a safety net for millions of people, especially children, who otherwise probably would have lost coverage as the country moved through a recession and jobless recovery,î said Paul Ginsburg, president of the research organization, which is supported primarily by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Covering Kids & Families program, also sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, estimates that at least 7.8 million children in the United States are uninsured, with at least 4 million of them eligible for low-cost or free health-care coverage.

A campaign on Tuesday launched a new back-to-school outreach effort to inform uninsured families about those health insurance programs in their own states and communities.

By Lee Bowman
Scripps Howard News Service

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