Nevada workers lacking heatlh coverage

Nevada employers are paying less of their workers' health insurance premiums, causing more employees to pass on coverage.

That's part of a national decline in employer coverage that health care reform law may help reverse, according to new research.

Increased costs for workers has been one of the reasons 7.3 million fewer people in the U.S. get coverage through employer health insurance plans now than a decade ago, said Lynn Blewett, a professor at the State Health Access Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota.

Nationwide, the percentage of private employers offering health care plans declined by 3.6 percent.

"Most of us get our insurance through our employers, so if employers are getting out of the business of offering health insurance, or charge higher premiums, there will be more uninsured," Blewett said.

The percentage of premium costs workers paid to keep their health insurance more than doubled from 1999 to 2009.

The employee's share of average premium share rose from 9.5 percent to 20.1 percent in the Silver State, according to two reports from the Princeton, N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Blewett concluded that Nevada's jump in employee health insurance premium costs puts the state in line with the national trend.

"Nevada used to be better than the rest of the nation in terms of how much employees had to pay for their premiums, but now it is about the same," said Blewett, who worked with the nonpartisan foundation on the project.

During the 1999-2009 period, the work force was growing dramatically in the Silver State; employment grew 23.2 percent during that time. During the same period, however, the percentage of Nevadans covered by employer health insurance dropped from 61.3 percent to 58.9 percent.

Nationally, the percentage of people covered by employer plans dropped from 69 percent to 61 percent during the same time. The 7.3 million nationwide drop in those covered by employer insurance plans includes 4.1 million dependents.

The Obama administration's Affordable Care Act is likely to increase the number of people covered by employer insurance plans, the foundation's researchers concluded. The number of people covered by employer-sponsored plans will rise 10 percent among companies with fewer than 100 employees.

"The (Affordable Care Act) will help for small employers," Blewett said. "Tax credit for small business should help."

But Larry Harrison, a veteran Las Vegas health insurance broker, is not convinced the health care reform will fix anything.

"The problem is rising health care costs. Employers are paying more in total costs so they are making employees pay more of the premiums," he explained. "Employers are in survival mode and this bill is driving the cost of health care up."

Blewett doesn't consider the Affordable Care Act a complete solution to the bigger problem of rising health care costs.

"If the employers won't pay it, who will? That's the concern," she said.

Contact reporter Valerie Miller at vmiller@lvbusinesspress.com or 702-387-5286.