Dive Brief:
- America’s Health Insurance Plans is touting a survey out this week finding 71% of U.S. adults who receive health insurance from their employer are satisfied with their current coverage.
- Still, 66% say the current cost of health insurance for Americans is unreasonable and 79% believe the overall cost will increase over the next two years.
- Despite the political environment around healthcare, 58% of survey respondents say comprehensive coverage that covers every needed service is more important than affordable coverage that fails to do so.
Dive Insight:
Health insurance is a major reason many people say they are staying at their current job: 24% say it is extremely impactful and 32% say it is very impactful, according to the poll.
“We were surprised to see such a large percentage of American workers who indicated the importance of health coverage in choosing and staying at their job,” said Phillip Morris, vice president of Luntz Global Partners.
Longtime conservative pollster Frank Luntz's firm conducted the study for AHIP.
More than 180 million Americans currently receive some form of healthcare from their employer, according to AHIP.
Employees at smaller companies generally pay more toward premiums and in cost sharing than those in large firms, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) 2017 Employer Health Benefits Survey On average, small firm workers contribute $1,550 more per year for family health coverage and have higher family deductibles than those at larger firms.
Many economists say the employer-based system is inefficient, detaching patients from the true cost of care.
And while the political debate in recent years has centered on the Affordable Care Act, Cigna CEO David Cordani argued that the employer-sponsored market's health is necessary for the overall healthcare system.
“Without a vibrant employer-sponsored marketplace the overall healthcare delivery system would not be able to deliver the services that it is delivering today for Medicare, Medicaid, the Medicaid/Medicare dual eligible and other subsets of populations," Cordani said at an AHIP event Tuesday.