Before the Affordable Care Act’s coverage provisions took effect in 2014, policy makers were concerned that new regulations, options, and penalties could cause companies to stop offering health insurance to their employees. A new study, being released as a Web First by Health Affairs, compared the extent to which US employers dropped or added this employee benefit between 2013 and 2014.

According to authors Jean Abraham, Anne B. Royalty, and Coleman Drake, there was little change between those years: 46.38 percent of private-sector employers offered coverage in both years, and 49.08 percent did not offer it in either year. Furthermore, just 3.45 percent of employers dropped coverage in 2014, and 1.10 percent added it (see exhibit below.) The authors used data from the nationally representative Medical Expenditure Panel Survey–Insurance Component.

Exhibit 1

The authors also examined the attributes of employers that dropped coverage and noted: “Small firms were more likely to drop coverage compared to large ones, as were those with more low-wage workers compared to those with fewer such workers, newer establishments compared to older ones, and those in the service sector compared to those in the blue- and white-collar industries.”

They recommend continued monitoring of the availability of employer-sponsored health insurance, “to determine whether the general stability…will persist.”

This study, part of Health Affairs’ DataWatch series, was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s State Health Access Reform Evaluation program and will also appear in the journal’s November issue.