Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Coverage Trends

According to the Economic Policy Institute, after falling every year since 2000, the share of non-elderly Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance coverage (ESI) essentially held steady between 2011 and 2012, increasing slightly to 58.4 percent. The labor market's slow improvement over the past two years ended the long-standing downward trend in employer-sponsored health coverage, with ESI increasing slightly by 0.1 percentage points in 2012. However, this comes on the heels of eleven years of erosion. 13.7 million fewer non-elderly Americans had insurance through their employers than in 2000, and as many as 29 million more people under age 65 would have had ESI in 2012 if the coverage rate had remained at its 2000 level. Massachusetts had the highest rate of ESI coverage among the under-65 population, at 70.8 percent in 2011/2012. It is followed by New Hampshire (70.0 percent), Connecticut (69.7 percent), Minnesota (69.0 percent), North Dakota (67.6 percent), Maryland (67.3 percent), and Utah (66.3 percent). In contrast, less than half of New Mexico's non-elderly population had ESI, at 47.2 percent. Source: Economic Policy Institute http://www.epi.org/press/public-insurance-health-reform-provisions/