Barely Hanging On: Middle-Class and Uninsured
This Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report explores health insurance affordability among middle-income workers during tough economic times. The report shows that the number of middle-income earners who obtained health insurance from their employers dropped by 3 million people from 2000 to 2008. Just 66% of people in families earning roughly $45,000 to $85,000 are now insured through their employers—a drop of seven percentage points from 2000 to 2008.
The increasing population of uninsured middle-income workers may be largely attributed to declines in employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) programs. Among middle-income Americans, only approximately 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.