Friday, 20 April 2007
American Workers: Health Insurance is Number 1 Benefit
A new survey by the National Business Group on Health found that 75% of workers rank health insurance as the most important benefit offered by employers.
The survey also found that workers are unwilling to trade health benefits for other benefits, such as retirement savings plans. Workers were in favor of charging smokers more for health benefits, but were generally against charging obese people more for benefits.
A majority of workers — 67% — also considered their current health plan to be “excellent” or “very good.” Among the qualities workers value in their plans:
- Easy plan management
- Freedom to choose care providers
- Cost limits on care and prescription drugs
“Providing cost-effective, high quality health care benefits to workers and their families is one of the greatest challenges that Corporate America is facing,” said National Business Group on Health president Helen Darling. “Employers are spending millions and millions of dollars to provide health care benefits, and we hope the results of this survey will give them valuable insight from employees and help them develop and design programs that best meet their overall needs.”
The survey was conducted online, and included 1,619 randomly selected workers. At the time of the survey, every included worker was between 22 and 69 years of age, and was employed by a company with at least 2,500 employees. The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
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