Employer-provided insurance continues to decline

[RedEarth]

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•The percentage of all employers offering health insurance in the past eight years peaked in 2000 at 69% and has fallen steadily since, hitting 60% this year, according to an annual survey of employers by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Among small firms of three to nine workers, the percentage offering insurance has dropped even more — from 58% in 2001 to 45% this year.

•From 2001 to 2005, the number of uninsured U.S. workers rose by 3.4 million. Almost 19 million workers — 17% of all employees — were uninsured in 2005, according to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

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Three years ago, she and her husband, John, left jobs with health benefits in New York to move to Florida to strike out on their own: John as a real estate agent and Angela as an office manager for an financial planner. Neither job came with health insurance.

Then they learned how difficult it is to buy health insurance outside of employment, mainly because they both had some minor health conditions. They were hopeful about an "open enrollment" period allowed each year under Florida law. During that time, insurers must offer coverage to sole proprietors and may not exclude those with medical problems.

But for the Ruggieros, the cost of coverage was out of the question: $1,500 a month to cover the couple and their 11-year-old son, Jared. So they remained uninsured until last January. When the real estate market tanked, John took a job as a package handler for a shipping firm, a position he still holds part time because it provides his family with health insurance.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2007-11-12-social-net_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip