Employer-sponsored Insurance Drops by 472,000 in Wisconsin since 2000-01.
Okay, there are scads of reasons why we need the reforms in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including many reforms that are already in place and having very positive impacts. So one graph doesn’t actually do the – which is a conclusion that was reinforced when I read Ezra Klein’s Wonkbook blog post yesterday: “Change is painful. But the health-care status quo is a complete disaster.“
Klein’s blog post summarizes the findings of the Commonwealth Fund’s latest survey of international health systems, a document that serves as a grim reminder that although the US spends a much larger share of national resources for health care (17.7% here, compared to no more than 12% in other countries), our health care system performs worse on a wide range of objective and subjective measures. With respect to the cost differential, Klein points out that, “If Americans only spent 12 percent of GDP on health care we would have saved $893 billion in 2012.”
His blog post has several excellent charts illustrating that Americans have much more difficulty accessing care, we pay more out of pocket, and we are much less satisfied with our health care system than people in the other nations examined.
However, when it comes to illustrating in one graph why the status quo nationally and in Wisconsin is unacceptable, I like the following graphic. Using Census Bureau data since the end of the 1990s, it illustrates the sharp drop in employer-sponsored coverage.
As that graph shows, from 1999-2000 to 2011-12 the portion of non-elderly Americans with employer-sponsored insurance dropped by 10 percentage points. Although Wisconsin has a relatively high percentage of people with employer-sponsored coverage, that rate has been falling faster in our state – dropping almost 13 percentage points during that period.
A report released earlier this month by the Economic Policy Institute analyzes the trends in employer coverage in all 50 states from 2000/01 to 2011/12. (Two year averages are used to smooth out fluctuations in the Census Burea’s Current Population Survey data.) It finds that there are now 12.9 million fewer non-elderly Americans with employer-sponsored insurance than there were 11 years earlier, including about 472,000 fewer in Wisconsin! Our state currently has the 10th highest percentage of non-elderly residents who have employer coverage, but it experienced the 5th largest percentage point drop over the past 11 years (tied with Indiana).
The very sharp decline in employer coverage in Wisconsin is driven by a number of factors, and it shows little evidence of abating – although the provision in the ACA insuring young adults through their parents’ health insurance policies has temporarily masked the continued drop in employer coverage of workers and their dependents. The trend line of rapidly falling employer coverage over the last decade or so vividly illustrates why it would be a mistake to repeal the ACA and accept the status quo.
Jon Peacock
