Given the rapid growth of health care costs, some experts were concerned with erosion of employment‐based private insurance (). This empirical analysis aims to quantify the concern.
Using the ational ealth ccount, we generated a cost index to represent state‐level annual cost growth. We merged it with the 1996–2003 edical xpenditure anel urvey. The unit of analysis is the family. We conducted both bivariate and multivariate logistic analyses.
The bivariate analysis found a significant inverse association between the cost index and the proportion of families receiving an offer of . The multivariate analysis showed that the cost index was significantly negatively associated with the likelihood of receiving an offer for the entire sample and for families in the first, second, and third quartiles of income distribution.
Rising health costs reduce availability and enrollment, and the financial protection provided by it, especially for middle‐class families.
