A report from UC Berkeley indicates the ongoing recession is affecting health insurance in California in a big way. Job loss is the main culprit but benefits are being slashed by some employers. The expense of providing health insurance for employees is huge despite the employees paying a portion of the cost.
Since November 2007 California residents have become uninsured to the tune of 500,000 people. That date is when the Berkeley report marks the beginning of this recession, reported by the San Francisco Gate. Since 2000 the number of employers who offer health insurance has been decreasing.
Of all the Americans who lost health insurance coverage during this recession, 13.5 percent of those call California home. There are a total of 3.7 million Americans who have lost their health insurance since the beginning of the recession. The numbers are conservative according to the Berkeley researchers.
The report notes a additional sour future trend of less health insurance coverage due to the rising expense of health premiums and lower numbers of employers offering benefits. If the economy regains it’s stride and starts to grow again there will still be an estimated 600,000 additional Californians and 4 million overall that will lose their insurance coverage.
Policy interventions excluded, the recovery will not happen from this point forward. The population explosion along with this continual decline of numbers of people with insurance coverage, uninsured persons total will increase according to Ken Jacobs, co-author of the report and Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Chairman.
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