17% of low-wage workers will remain uninsured under ACA

Health-insurance Coverage for Low-wage Workers, 1979-2010 and Beyond

By John Schmitt
Center for Economic and Policy Research, February 2012

In 2010, over 38 percent of low-wage workers lacked health insurance from any source, up from 16 percent in 1979.

Coverage problems are particularly severe for Latino workers. Almost 40 percent of all Latino workers (not just low-wage workers) have no health insurance of any form. African American (about 22 percent) and Asian (about 17 percent) workers are also much less likely to have coverage than white workers (about 12 percent).

Affordable Care Act of 2010

For simplicity, if we assume that all adults – workers and non-workers – have the same coverage rate, then under CBO’s projections, workers as a group would have a 5.8 percent non-coverage rate after the ACA. By comparison, in 2010, the actual non-coverage rate for all workers was about 17.7 percent. The CBO gives no guidance about how the coverage improvements for workers would be divided across the wage distribution. If, at the extreme, we assume that all of the uncovered workers are low-wage workers by our definition – that is that all 5.8 percent of workers remaining without coverage are in the bottom quintile – then the non-coverage rate for low-wage workers would be about 29.0 percent. This would be a reduction of one-fourth in the share of low-wage workers without coverage relative to the actual non-coverage rate for low-wage workers in 2010 (38.5 percent). A less extreme assumption about the distribution of non-coverage rates by wage level after the ACA would produce larger gains for low-wage workers. For example, if instead we assume that the top 80 percent of workers have a frictional 3 percent non-coverage rate, then an overall non-coverage rate for workers of 5.8 percent implies a 17.0 percent non-coverage rate for low-wage workers, well short of universal coverage, but a non-coverage rate that is less than half of the current rate.

The ACA will not produce universal coverage for low-wage workers. But, if the ACA is not enacted – due to judicial or legislative action – every indication is that coverage rates will continue their three-decades-long decline.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/health-low-wage-2012-02.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Conservatives who oppose health care reform often argue that being uninsured is a consequence of the individual's own personal irresponsibility. Those individuals merely need to shape up and go out and get a job, and then they would have health insurance. The conservatives lose their credibility on this point when the actual data show that 38 percent of low-wage workers, who do go out and get a job, lack health insurance from any source.

Because of such deficiencies in our system reform advocates were able to muster the political support to pass the Affordable Care Act - a half-glass reform. Those who view this as a glass half full celebrate the fact that over half of these uninsured workers will become insured under ACA.

The advocates of reform who view this as a glass half empty bemoan the fact that ACA will still leave about 17 percent of low-wage workers without insurance. The diversionary half full, half empty debate is particularly tragic when you consider that a single payer national health program would have brought us a full glass.

The addendum below is from this same report. It is added because it explains the roots of the decline in coverage rates - an important concept indicating that our battle for health care justice is only a part of the offensive that must take place to expedite social justice throughout the United States.

ADDENDUM

The decline in coverage rates has its roots in two long-standing economic processes. The first is the rising cost of health care, which has squeezed workers’ wages and made it less economical for firms to offer health insurance, especially to low-wage workers. In the absence of reforms to the existing health-care system, these costs – and implicitly the pressure on workers’ after-health-insurance compensation – are projected to continue rising indefinitely.

The other force behind falling coverage rates, especially for low-wage workers, is the decline over the last three decades in the bargaining power of most workers. Beginning in the late 1970s, a set of structural changes in the economy has significantly reduced the bargaining power of workers, especially those at the middle and the bottom of the wage distribution. These structural changes include: a steep decline in unionization; an erosion in the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage; the deregulation of many historically high-wage industries (trucking, airlines, telecommunications, and others); the privatization of many state and local government functions (from school cafeteria workers to public-assistance administrators); the opening up of the U.S. economy to much higher volumes of foreign trade; a sharp rise in the share of immigrant workers, who often lack basic legal rights and operate in an economy that provides few labor protections regardless of citizenship; and a macroeconomic policy environment that has typically maintained the unemployment rate well above levels consistent with full employment. All of these changes have acted to reduce the bargaining power of workers, especially those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution. As a result, workers as a group have seen their relative (and even absolute) wages fall and the availability and quality of health-insurance and retirement plans decline.