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August 16, 2004 at 08:00 PM
Small business growth seems to be having little effect on U.S. employment-based health coverage rates.[@@]
Paul Fronstin, a researcher at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, Washington, has published data supporting that conclusion in a new report on employment-based health benefits.
In the past, some health policy experts have wondered whether U.S. employment-based health coverage rates might be falling because a higher percentage of Americans are working for small employers.
“Workers in small firms are much less likely to have health benefits than workers in large firms,” Fronstin writes in the EBRI report.
But Fronstin’s analysis of figures from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the percentage of U.S. workers who work for small firms was about the same in 2002 as it was in 1987. The analysis also shows that workers at the biggest companies were more likely to lose employer-sponsored health benefits than workers at smaller firms were.
