State employees enjoy comparatively "rich" employer-sponsored health coverage, but coverage and the employees' share in the cost vary widely from state to state. However, research, commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trust and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, revealed state employees in general contributed 10 percent less in paying for their coverage than the average for all employees who had employer-sponsored coverage in the U.S.
See also: Workers want to stay on employer plans
The State Health Care Spending Project was an attempt to "provide policymakers and other stakeholders with information on state employee health care expenditures, as well as the factors underlying this spending," the nonprofit partners said in a release. The project had two motivating factors:
- Health insurance costs are now "a significant portion of states' overall health care spending, second only to Medicaid;" and
- "Little has been known about how states' employee health plans and costs compare with one another and with those of large, private sector employers."
In the U.S. as a whole in 2012, researchers found that employer-sponsored health coverage totaled $865 billion and insured 169 million people — 31 percent of all health care spending in the U.S. Of that total, public and private employers contributed 73 percent. Employees paid 27 percent.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
