Fox News is reporting that employer-provided health care plans may be a thing of the past.
Former Obama health adviser Zeke Emanuel predicted that Obamacare will replace 80 percent of employer-provided health plans will disappear in 10 years.
“It’s going to actually be better for people. They’ll have more choice,” Emanuel said. Â “Most people who work for an employer and get their coverage through an employer do not have choice.”
A Wall Street research firm S&P Capital IQ went even further than Emanuel’s prediction to say that 90 percent of plans would disappear within the next 10 years, according to Fox News’ Jim Angle.
Angle reported that analysts see this happening because the $2,000 Obamacare penalty is cheaper than the cost of the average employee’s insurance.
“For a worker making only $15 an hour, typical employer coverage for a family costs $15,000 or $16,000. That’s more than half of that worker’s annual wage,” said John Goodman of the National Center For Policy Analysis.
A Heritage study on Obamacare enrollment data released in June shows that most gains in individual coverage were offset by a decline in employer-sponsored coverage.
“The biggest change in the private market during the six-month period was not the expansion in individual-market coverage, but the decline in fully insured employer group coverage. While enrollment in fully insured employer group coverage modestly increasedâby just over 175,000 individualsâin Q4 2013, it dropped by nearly 4.2 million individuals in Q1 2014. The result was a net enrollment decrease of 4 million individuals for the combined six-month period.”
