RWJ report: 1 in 5 workers in U.S. are uninsured

According to a new national report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, nearly 1 in 5 American workers does not have health coverage, compared to about 1 in 7 workers who were uninsured in the mid-1990s, the last time there was a push for major federal health-care reform (Source: “In U.S., 20% of workers now without health care,” Columbus Dispatch/Associated Press, March 24, 2009).

Among the findings in the report are that there were nearly 9 million more Americans who were uninsured at the time the data was compiled than there were in the mid-1990s, and six million more adults with jobs who did not have insurance. In addition, the study found that the average costs paid by an employee for an individual health insurance premium have risen nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes.

The report, titled “At the Brink: Trends in America’s Uninsured,” (pdf) was prepared by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota and analyzed state-by-state health coverage trends using averages of U.S. Census Bureau Data from 1994 to 1996, compared to averages from 2006 and 2007.

"The thing I think is interesting is how many workers are newly uninsured," said Lynn Blewett, director of SHADAC. "In the last couple of years, we've seen a deterioration of private health insurance."

The same trend was found in the 2008 Ohio Family Health Survey, where the percentage of Ohioans aged 18 to 64 who got coverage through their employer dropped from 63.5 percent in 2004 to 61.7 percent in 2008 and the number of children covered by a parent’s employer-sponsored plan dropped from 59.5 percent to 53.3 percent.