According to a recent survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (www.ebri.org), a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute that focuses on health, savings, retirement, and economic security issues, the importance of benefits as criteria in choosing jobs remains high among American workers. Health insurance, in particularly, continues to be, by far, the most important employee benefit to workers. This finding has remained constant even following the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), which has continued to raise questions about whether employers will continue to offer health coverage to their workers in the future.
The EBRI survey also found that, in 2014, while the majority of workers were satisfied with the health benefits they now have, almost one-third (31 percent) expressed an interest in changing the current mix of benefits and wages offered by their employers.
In specific, 69 percent of American workers said they were satisfied with the mix of wages and health benefits they currently received. Slightly more workers said they would give up health benefits to get higher wages (19 percent) than those who would trade wages for health benefits (12 percent).
Not only is health insurance important in general to employees, but they also appreciate the opportunity to have some choices. "Choice of health plans is important to workers, and they would like more choices," said Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI's Health Research and Education Program, and co-author of the report. "But most workers express confidence that their employers or unions have selected the best available health plan, and they are not as confident in their ability to choose the best available plan if their employers or unions did, in fact, stop offering coverage." That is, according to the survey, most individuals are not highly comfortable that they could use an objective rating system to choose health insurance. In addition, they are not extremely confident that a rating system could help them choose the best health plan.
The EBRI survey also found that, if current tax preferences for employment-based health benefits were to change, such that benefits were to become taxable, almost half (47 percent) said that they would continue with their current level of coverage. This is up from 40 percent in 2012.
Among the remaining 53 percent of respondents, 26 percent said they would want to switch to a less costly plan provided by their employer, 20 percent said they would want to shop for coverage themselves directly from insurers, and seven percent said they would want to drop coverage altogether.
The report, titled, "Views on Employment-Based Health Benefits: Findings from the 2014 Health and Voluntary Benefits Survey," examined public opinion surrounding employment-based health coverage using data from the 2013 and 2014 Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey (WBS), conducted by EBRI and Greenwald & Associates. It also drew from historical data from the Health Confidence Survey (HCI).
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