Middle Class Losing Their Employer Supplied Health Insurance

3 million middle-income earners lost their employer supplied health insurance from 2000 to 2008.

Just 66 percent of people in families earning roughly $45,000 to $85,000 are now insured through their employer—a drop of seven percentage points from 2000 to 2008. According to a report published this month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/State Health Access Data Assistance Center.

Employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) has long been the mainstay of health coverage for middle-class families, who typically do not qualify for government insurance programs. Among middle-income Americans, only about half of the decline in employer-sponsored coverage from 2000 to 2008 was offset by government insurance programs. For people who earned less money, declines in ESI were even steeper, but those numbers were mostly offset by increases in coverage through government insurance programs like Medicaid.

The middle class is also seeing their Health Insurance premiums rise 3 times faster than wages and now averages $13,375 per year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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