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August 31, 2004 at 08:00 PM
U.S. employees who have access to employer-paid ancillary life, health and disability benefits are more likely to take up those benefits than they are to take up employer-paid medical insurance.[@@]
Carl Barsky, an economist at the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, has published tables supporting that argument in an analysis of benefits data from the 2003 National Compensation Survey.
The tables cover survey results for private employers.
The BLS tried to exclude pure employee-paid worksite products from the survey results by asking employers to tell them only about benefits that were at least partly employer-funded, according to Barsky’s analysis, which appears in the August edition of the BLS Monthly Labor Review.
The private establishments surveyed were far more likely to offer employees access to medical insurance than to the other benefits included in the survey. The percentage of employees with access to medical insurance was 60%. That compares with access levels of 50% for life insurance, 40% for dental insurance, 39% for short-term disability insurance, 30% for long-term disability insurance and 25% for vision coverage.
But take-up rates are higher for benefits other than medical insurance.
The average take-up rate for medical insurance was 75%, but the average take-up rate was 76% for vision coverage, 80% for dental insurance, 93% for LTD insurance, 94% for life insurance, and 95% for STD insurance.
