Healthcare Coverage Informs Job Decisions For 50% of Americans

October 16, 2019 - The fear of having no healthcare coverage drives Americans’ decisions regarding employment, according to a recent study by the TransAmerica Center for Health Studies.

The study surveyed 3,760 adults between the ages of 18 and 64. The center conducted the 20-minute online survey during the month of August 2019.

Employees’ satisfaction with insurance quality and their healthcare overall is the highest since 2013 when the TransAmerican Center first launched the survey. Eighty-four percent of covered adults expressed positivity about the quality of their healthcare system and 13 percent indicated that the quality improved.

Americans continue to highly value health insurance, the survey found. While 72 percent say that their salary is critical to their job satisfaction, 61 percent say healthcare benefits are very important to job satisfaction. The study’s participants were willing to pursue health insurance to the point of switching jobs. Thirty percent of adults switched jobs because their former position did not provide health insurance.

But once employees are covered, it is not just job satisfaction but also fear that drives them to stay in a position with health insurance. Over 50 percent of employed individuals agree that they would stay in their current positions in order to retain healthcare benefits, with 22 percent saying that they “strongly agree” that this is the case.

“The desire to find stability in health coverage is demonstrated in our new survey, Americans Settle in During Healthcare Uncertainty, with the consistent number of Americans having health coverage over recent years and the most common sources of new coverage for the previously uninsured being employers and state programs," said Hector De La Torre, executive director of TCHS.

Healthcare satisfaction is not homogenous. The statistics for those on the Exchange, both state and federal, indicate that employer-sponsored individuals may have good reason to hang onto their coverage.

In 2018, the diversity and amount of healthcare options on the Exchange decreased and, based on the study’s results, beneficiaries felt the repercussions. Twenty-three percent of those on the Exchange said that their access to insurance decreased due to fewer options and 26 percent saw a decrease in insurance quality.

“With healthcare in the U.S. adapting to the ACA over several years, followed by uncertainty due to attempts to repeal and replace it, and then elimination of the individual mandate requiring Americans to have health insurance in 2018, consumers are understandably cautious as they try to keep or find employer-based health coverage," said De La Torre.

Still, despite the challenges facing the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) federal health insurance marketplace, over two out of every five Americans support the ACA. This has remained fairly constant for the past two years, even as payers withdrew from the Exchange in 2018 leaving bare counties with only one payer option.

In the last year, however, the Exchange’s prospects may be improving, with one major payer announcing revenue gains in 2018, their first increase in years. Albeit, this payer was an outlier that year.

In addition to covering healthcare satisfaction, the study analyzed Americans’ healthcare costs. The results revealed a familiar, negative theme.  Almost one in three Americans place the ability to pay for care as their highest priority in the healthcare system.

For nearly half of the uninsured population, the price of healthcare prevents them from obtaining insurance.  Prescription drug spending may be a driving factor for that number, with 71 percent of the uninsured saying prescription drugs are too expensive.

When asked who was responsible for obstructively high drug prices, two entities came to mind for most Americans. Fifty-nine percent of Americans hold payers responsible and 78 percent of the population said pharmaceutical companies play a role in driving prescription prices higher.

However, when asked to isolate the primary motivator for high prescription prices, over half of the participants indicated pharmaceutical companies were at fault.

Positively, fewer Americans reported a premium cost or deductible increase. However, since the downward shift in reporting was only around five percentage points for each, the change is of low significance.