California's System of Job-Based Health Insurance Continues to Decline

New report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research finds that health costs are crushing backbone of health insurance system. Public programs buoy children's coverage.

Los Angeles – A new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows that job-based health insurance coverage - the backbone of the state's system of health insurance - is declining. While job-based family coverage plummets, children's coverage is protected by public insurance programs, such as Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.

"We are seeing a shift to government programs, like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, as employers fail to provide affordable health insurance for working families," said author E. Richard Brown, Ph.D., director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and professor in the School of Public Health. "The data show that California's health insurance system is increasingly unstable and unable to provide for the basic medical needs of millions of residents."

While a majority of Californians are still insured through their jobs or those of relatives, those numbers are declining, specifically among dependents. Pushed by a dramatic 79.1 percent increase in the cost of job-based family coverage for the average worker, enrollment of dependents dropped 4 percentage points for children and 2 percentage points for adults from 2001 to 2003. All income groups and all racial and ethnic groups had significant decreases in job-based insurance. ...

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The California Endowment

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