U.S. consumers believe group health coverage will continue to exist but be harder for them to afford.
Paul Fronstin, a researcher at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), Washington, has included data on consumers' views about employer-based health coverage in a summary of results from a telephone survey of 1,001 U.S. adults ages 21 and older that was conducted in May and June.
About 57% of the survey participants with employment-based coverage said they were very or extremely confident that their employers or unions would continue to offer health benefits, and only 18% said they were not too confident or not at all confident that their provider of health benefits would drop health benefits altogether.
But Frontstin found that low-income survey participants — the kinds of people who might be eligible for subsidies to buy individual coverage through the new health insurance distribution exchanges that are supposed to be created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) — were less confident about continued access to group health benefits than higher-paid participants were.
