That "bump!" you didn't hear was the sound of employer-sponsored health plans not being swarmed by new plan participants because of Obamacare's employer mandate.
A study by Mercer found that, yes, there was a jump in the number of American workers who received coverage via an employer-sponsored plan. But that bump up was the result of more workers entering the workforce and being eligible for an existing employer plan — not because employees opted for employer coverage thanks to PPACA.
The increase in 2015 over 2014 in sheer numbers of workers covered was small to begin with: 1.6 percent more. But the covered workforce grew by 2.2 percent during the same time.
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"Employers that had to offer coverage to more employees were braced for a bump in enrollment this year, but they didn't know how big it would be," said Tracy Watts, a senior partner and leader for health reform at Mercer. "While some did see increases, for the most part it seems the newly eligible either had coverage through a parent's or spouse's plan or through Medicaid — or are continuing to go bare."
The trends the study found was almost completely at odds with the forecasts made prior to PPACA's implementation that employers would be scrambling for ways to accommodate the onslaught of new plan members.
"Across all employers in the survey, the average percentage of employees who were eligible for coverage rose one percentage point, from 87 percent to 88 percent, but the average percentage of eligible employees who enrolled dropped a point, from 84 percent to 83 percent. That left the average percentage of all employees (both eligible and ineligible) who enrolled in 2015 essentially unchanged from 2014, at 74 percent (emphasis by Mercer)," the report said.
Food and lodging industry respondents reported the highest increase in number of eligible workers, from 57 percent to 60 percent.
"But overall growth in the percentage of employees enrolled rose by less than one percentage point, to 34 percent," the report said.
Enrollment growth did occur at some workplaces.
"For one in 10 employers in the survey, the percentage of their workforce enrolled in a health plan rose by 5 percent or more from 2014 to 2015.
But, given the number of respondents with no growth or even a decrease in the percentage of employees enrolled, this wasn't enough to move the needle overall," Mercer concluded.
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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.
