No matter what President Obama says about how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has made access to health care less dependent on employment, most Americans still have health care on their minds when applying for jobs.
A survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Collective Health, a company that provides health care administration software to self-insured employers, finds that three quarters of U.S. adults say that health care benefits would be a significant factor in their decision to take a job.
Recommended For You
The significance of health insurance on the job cuts across age groups, with those ages 18-34 nearly as likely to cite benefits as an important consideration as those between ages 45-54.
Employees also strongly prioritize traditional health benefits over the various perks that some employers, particularly in the Silicon Valley, have begun promoting.
Two-thirds of the youngest workers surveyed said that good health care was more important to them than workplace perks, while just under three-quarters of workers in the three older age categories said the same.
Millennial women, all of whom are of childbearing age, put a lot of emphasis on having good health care from a job. Fifty percent say that the lack of generous coverage or reasonable costs for a health plan would "strongly" impact their decision to accept a job offer, compared to 35 percent of millennial men.
However, among baby boomers, it's the men who care more about benefits. Fifty-five percent said the quality of an employer's health plan would have a big impact on their decision to take a job, compared to only 37 percent of Boomer women.
But while Americans say that health care is important, many of them admit they don't know exactly understand the benefits that are available to them and what they cover.
Unsurprisingly, young people are the most oblivious, with three-quarters of millennials saying that they're confused by health care benefits.
Even 70 percent of parents with a child under age 18 say the same thing.
Reaffirming past research on the subject, the survey also found that most Americans do not have the savings necessary to cover the types of big medical bill to which the increasing number of people on high deductible plans are vulnerable.
Sixty-one percent of adults say they are not prepared to handle a $5,000 bill. Among parents, 69 percent say the same thing, as do 81 percent of millennial women.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
