EPI has a sobering new report on the decline of employer-based health insurance. Regular readers of this blog will find it a familiar story: Health costs rise, businesses can't afford coverage, they stop offering it to their employees. Their employees, then, end up on public programs like Medicaid, in the dystopic individual insurance market, or with no insurance at all. And yes, of course there's a graph:
What's interesting about EPI's data is that it suggests the declines are strikingly uniform. Employer-sponsored coverage rates for whites, blacks, and Hispanics all dropped between five percent and six percent. The lowest fifth of the income distribution lost almost seven percent of their employer-based health coverage, but the middle fifth lost about six percent. In other words, this is hitting everyone. The only place where you see serious variations are among different states, and helpfully, EPI has built a cool interactive tool where you can check out how your state is doing. Crucial swing state Missouri, for instance, has lost almost eight percent of their employer-sponsored coverage for adults, and almost 12 percent for their kids. No wonder the state is competitive...
What's interesting about EPI's data is that it suggests the declines are strikingly uniform. Employer-sponsored coverage rates for whites, blacks, and Hispanics all dropped between five percent and six percent. The lowest fifth of the income distribution lost almost seven percent of their employer-based health coverage, but the middle fifth lost about six percent. In other words, this is hitting everyone. The only place where you see serious variations are among different states, and helpfully, EPI has built a cool interactive tool where you can check out how your state is doing. Crucial swing state Missouri, for instance, has lost almost eight percent of their employer-sponsored coverage for adults, and almost 12 percent for their kids. No wonder the state is competitive... 
