Workers are losing health insurance

Changes in employer-based health coverage drive up the number of uninsured people.

A new study says employers are passing along the rising cost of health insurance, and more working people are uninsured. In this region that trend is most evident in New Jersey. About 14 percent of New Jersey workers were uninsured is the mid-1990s. By 2007 that number rose to 17 percent, or more than 741,000 people.

Hyman: You have to understand of course, that since that time we’ve had the economic downturn, thousands of people in the state have lost jobs and with that have lost insurance, so this problem has gotten even more worse than our numbers are able to show.

Andy Hyman is an insurance expert from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which documented trends across more than a decade. The study found that New Jersey residents are paying some of the highest health insurance premiums in the country. Local experts say those insurance costs have risen far faster than worker incomes.