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The percentage of millennials who lack major medical coveragemay have soared since 2016.
|Analysts from the Transamerica Center for HealthStudies are reporting new survey results that show loss of Medicaidcoverage and individual major medical coverage has wiped outincreased use of group health coverage.
|About 16 percent of millennials lacked health coveragein late 2018, up from 11 percent in 2016, according toTransamerica center analysts.
|Related: Who are America's uninsured?
|The center analysts based their figures on an online survey of3,604 U.S. adults ages 18 to 64 that was conducted in August2018.
|The center defines “millennials” as being people bornfrom 1980 through 1997. The analystsclassified 1,172 the survey participants asmillennials.
|Here's what happened to specific types ofmillennial coverage use (or lack of use) between 2016 and2018:
- Employer health benefits: 50 percent (up from45 percent)
- Medicaid (or a similar program):11 percent (down from 14 percent)
- Medicare: 2 percent (down from3 percent)
- Individual major medical insurance, purchased throughor outside of the Affordable Care Act public exchangesystem: 7 percent (down from14 percent)
- Uninsured: 16 percent (up from11 percent)
The survey also detected what could be a statistical fluke butcould be a sign of the health effects of millennials' reduced useof health insurance: the percentage of millennial surveyparticipants who described themselves as being “unable to work dueto a disability or illness” increased to 2 percent in 2017and 2018, up from a five-year low of 1 percent in2016.
|The analysts also found that millennials have a strong interestin the debate about the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
|About 30 percent of the millennial participants saidthey were very or extremely aware of potential changes to healthcare policy, compared with 20 percent of the Baby Boomersin the sample, 20 percent of the members of Generation X,and 23 percent of the members of the post-millennialgeneration, Gen Z.
|Resources
A copy of the millennials survey report is available here.
|Read more:
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
