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Fewer Pennsylvanians Get Health Insurance With Jobs, Says Keystone Research Center

Posted on: Thursday, 28 September 2006, 00:00 CDT

HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The number of Pennsylvanians with employer-provided health insurance declined by 5.1% between 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, according to a new study by the Washington, DC-based Economic Policy Institute.

Since 1999-2000, 2.7 million fewer Americans and 357,000 fewer Pennsylvanians have employer-provided insurance coverage. Factoring in population growth, 533,500 more Pennsylvanians under 65 would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2005 if the coverage rate had remained at the 1999-2000 level. Nationally, coverage declined in 2005 for the fifth consecutive year.

The decline in coverage comes despite four years of economic growth in Pennsylvania and at a time when, despite an expanding economy, wages for all but the highest paid workers have not even kept pace with inflation.

"The economic story of the past six years is a troubling one," said Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center. "Economic growth has not translated into economic security for most Pennsylvanians -- not in wage terms, and not in terms of basic benefits."

The EPI study, Health Insurance Eroding For Working Families, can be found on the EPI Web site at http://www.epinet.org/.

In the United States as a whole, according to the EPI study, employers with fewer than 100 employees were the least likely to provide health coverage to their workers. The bottom 40% of wage earners represent two-thirds of all uninsured workers.

Despite the overall trend in health coverage, 70% of Pennsylvanians continue to have employer-provided health coverage compared to 63% of workers nationwide.

"This data illustrates that health care reform is urgently needed," said Price. "To stem the decline of employer-based coverage, policies should both lower the cost of providing coverage for small business and encourage large low-wage employers to bear more of the public burden of providing health care to their workers," said Price.

The Keystone Research Center is a Harrisburg-based research organization and leading source of independent analysis of Pennsylvania's economy and public policy. KRC recently published The State of Working Pennsylvania 2006, its annual look at the health of the state's economy from the point view of workers, which documents recent declines in wages. The report is available online at http://www.keystoneresearch.org/.

Keystone Research Center

CONTACT: Mark Price, +1-717-255-7158, or Peter Wiley, +1-570-522-0738,both of Keystone Research Center

Web site: http://www.keystoneresearch.org/http://www.epinet.org/

Source: PRNewswire

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