Employer health plan enrollment continues to fall
The aging of the population has stabilized employer plan numbers for people over 65.
The number of Americans with some kind of health insurance increased in 2023, but the number with employment-based health insurance fell.
About 305.2 million of the United States’ 331.7 million residents had health coverage in 2023, according to new Current Population Survey health insurance tables posted Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The total number of people with coverage increased 0.4% from the 2022 count.
But the number of people with employment-based coverage fell 0.9%, to 178.2 million, and the percentage of the population with employment-based coverage fell to 53.7%, from 54.5%.
Related: Employer-based health insurance: Covered 54% of Americans in 2022
The percentage of Americans with employment-based health coverage has fallen in three of the past four years and is down from a peak of 56.4% in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic showed up.
People Under 65
Employment-based health coverage enrollment counts fell 1.7% for babies, children and teens under 19, to 41.2 million, and 0.8% for people ages 19 through 64, to 123.4 million.
The percentage of the 196.1 million Americans ages 19 through 64 with employment-based coverage dropped to 62.9%, from 63.5%.
Some have suggested that enrollee counts could be falling partly because more workers are using employer-backed “cash for individual coverage” arrangements, such as individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements and qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangements.
Older Americans
The health plan enrollment picture for the 59.2 million Americans ages 65 and older was different. For them, the number of people with employment-based coverage rose 1.1% in 2023, to 13.7 million.
Many employers have dropped or narrowed access to post-retirement health benefits in recent years. The increase in the number of older people with employment-based coverage may be due partly to an increase in the number of workers ages 65 and older.
Another factor could be the rapid growth in the number of retired people in that age group. An increase in the number of retirees could be helping to stabilize the number of people with retiree health benefits, even if the percentage of retirees with those benefits is falling.