Have Employer-Based Health Benefits Dropped?
Just the other day, my analysis of the RAND Corporation’s survey of health insurance from September 2013 through February 2015 led me to conclude that “economic growth improved coverage more than Obamacare did.”
However, there are other sources that contradict the RAND survey’s conclusions about employer-based benefits. My Forbes colleague Scott Gottlieb, MD, reviews a new report from Goldman Sachs that estimates small employers dropped 2.2 million beneficiaries from coverage, a reduction of 13 percent from 2013.
Last year, Ed Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski of the Heritage Foundation concluded that nearly 3.8 million people lost employer-based coverage through June 2014.
Both the Goldman Sachs and Heritage Foundation analysts relied on data from insurers rather than beneficiaries. Nevertheless, I am at a loss to understand how people who lost employer-based benefits would not say so in a phone survey.
At the Health Affairs blog, Marc Berk issues a caution about the “quick turnaround” surveys that are exciting the Obamacare debate, noting that the government itself is relying especially on the Gallup-Healthways survey instead of sober estimates produced by its own Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The surveys agree that more people are dependent on Medicaid and Obamacare exchanges have enrolled a few million. The great divergence is with respect to employer-based health benefits.