When President Barack Obama recently announced that more than 7 million people had signed up for coverage between October and the end of March, the assumption was that many of them did so by utilizing state-based exchanges or HealthCare.gov. However, new analysis suggests that newly insured Americans are now covered thanks to employee benefits.
Among previously uninsured sign-ups, a mere 1.5 million enrolled through the federal health exchange website, nonpartisan think tank the Rand Corporation found. Modern Healthcare reported that the remainder of the nearly 4 million people who formerly weren't covered rectified this situation through their workplace.
Additionally, the Rand report indicated just how many people went without coverage in 2013. Approximately 41 million didn't have health plans in place overall, but 14.5 million enrolled eventually, bringing the national uninsured rate to just under 16 percent, from 20 percent.
Modern Healthcare also noted, based on the Rand report, that more than 5 million Americans had coverage at the beginning of the year, but lost it later on due to cancelations. The essential health benefits provision requires all qualified health plans to satisfy certain benchmarks, which is why many people had to buy all new plans or purchase those that satisfy the mandate.
More recently, employer-sponsored health plan enrollment has been somewhat limited among men and women under the age of 30. The Wall Street Journal reported, based on analysis from Automatic Data Processing, that through the first three months of 2014, take-up rates dipped by 1.4 percent from the same period in 2013. Roughly 60 percent of individuals eligible to receive benefits from their workplace take advantage of them, down nearly 8 percent since 2009.
