While health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces has been the subject of increasing attention, a recent report analyzing trends in the employer-sponsored insurance market published by the University of Minnesota's State Health Access Data Assistance Center, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serves as a reminder that the majority of Americans receive their insurance benefits through their employer.
While the report shows that overall trends in the employer-sponsored insurance marketplace remain relatively stable, the data demonstrates a slight decrease nationwide in the number of employers offering insurance between 2011 and 2015. Although the percentage of companies with more than 50 employees offering health insurance has slightly increased, the percentage of employers with fewer than 50 employees offering coverage has fallen from 35.7% to 29.4%.
Nationally, 75% of eligible workers were enrolled in their employer-sponsored health plan in 2015, representing a decrease of 1.7 percentage points from 2014. During the same period, the proportion of workers enrolled in high-deductible health plans increased significantly, by 4.2 percentage points at the national level. The report showed wide and significant variation among states in average annual single coverage premiums, with a difference of $2,688 between the highest and lowest average premiums.
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