Health Insurance Daily

Studies Show Shift In Health Benefits, Attitudes

Consumers want more coverage and choice in health care, but don’t want to pay higher insurance costs, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Chicago polled 1,500 Americans. The survey was published in Health Affairs and released Tuesday at a press briefing in Washington, D.C.

More than three-quarters of people without health insurance reject the idea of mandating that it be purchased, researchers found. Overall, consumers are increasingly supportive of making people pay more for unhealthy behavior. Forty-three percent of Californians said obese people should be charged higher premiums, compared to 28% nationally.

Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Michigan found a steady erosion in health benefits over the past decade. About 20% of workers in firms that offer insurance are not eligible, Health Affairs reports. About 25% of private-sector employees worked in firms that offered retiree health benefits in 2003, down from 32% in 1997. A study by Yale and Harvard universities warns that trends are leading to the “graying” of group health insurance, in which the population of workers with job-based coverage is becoming old and wealthy faster than the population overall.

Despite intense cost pressures, firms covering more than 90% of the nation’s workforce view health benefits as an important tool to attract and retain qualified workers, according to another study from the Center for Studying Health System Change and the Commonwealth Fund. Moreover, the majority of firms agreed that all employers should share in the cost of health insurance, either by covering their own workers or by contributing to a fund to cover the uninsured.

Article provided by BenefitNews - November 16, 2006.

posted by Mike @ 8:56 AM