Employer health insurance offerings and employee enrollment decisions.
OBJECTIVE
To determine how the characteristics of the health benefits offered by employers affect worker insurance coverage decisions.


METHODS
The 1996-1997 and the 1998-1999 rounds of the nationally representative Community Tracking Study Household Survey.


METHODS
We use multinomial logistic regression to analyze the choice between own-employer coverage, alternative source coverage, and no coverage among employees offered health insurance by their employer. The key explanatory variables are the types of health plans offered and the net premium offered. The models include controls for personal, health plan, and job characteristics.


RESULTS
When an employer offers only a health maintenance organization married employees are more likely to decline coverage from their employer and take-up another offer (odds ratio (OR)=1.27, p<.001), while singles are more likely to accept the coverage offered by their employer and less likely to be uninsured (OR=0.650, p<.001). Higher net premiums increase the odds of declining the coverage offered by an employer and remaining uninsured for both married (OR=1.023, p<.01) and single (OR=1.035, p<.001) workers.


CONCLUSIONS
The type of health plan coverage an employer offers affects whether its employees take-up insurance, but has a smaller effect on overall coverage rates for workers and their families because of the availability of alternative sources of coverage. Relative to offering only a non-HMO plan, employers offering only an HMO may reduce take-up among those with alternative sources of coverage, but increase take-up among those who would otherwise go uninsured. By modeling the possibility of take-up through the health insurance offers from the employer of the spouse, the decline in coverage rates from higher net premiums is less than previous estimates.
Polsky
Daniel
D
Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Stein
Rebecca
R
Nicholson
Sean
S
Bundorf
M Kate
MK
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003258:Consumer Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003657:Decision Making; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005249:Fees and Charges; D005260:Female; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000145:classification / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D008875:Middle Aged; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012847:Single Person; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States