Small Businesses shedding Health Care Coverage for last Ten Years.

The following story and report should be copied and saved to trash Republican claims Obamacare will result in more employers dropping health coverage for their employees. That’s been happening over the last 10 years anyway, well before the Affordable Care Act was even glimmer in Obama’s eyes.

jsonline: An estimated 400,000 fewer people in Wisconsin get health insurance through an employer than a decade ago, as fewer employers offer coverage and fewer workers

opt to accept it, according to a report released Thursday.

The percentage of the state's population under 65 with health benefits fell to an average of 69.1% for 2010 and 2011 compared with an average of 79% for 1999 and 2000, according to the report financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Fewer than half of all employers in Wisconsin - 49.3% - now offer health benefits, compared with 59.9% in 2000. The sharpest decline was in employers with fewer than 50 employees.

Wisconsin saw the largest drop in the country over the past decade in the percentage of employees in small businesses, according to the report. In 1999 and 2000, an average of 71.8% of the workers at small employers were offered health insurance. By 2010 and 2011, the percentage had fallen to an average of 51.2%.

The report provides a benchmark for whether the Affordable Care Act leads to fewer employers offering health benefits. Any drop will need to be put in perspective of the established trend, said Julie Sonier, deputy director of the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota. "We document the trend over an entire decade," she said.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act contend it will result in employers dropping coverage. But Sonier said that hasn't happened in Massachusetts, which put in place a series of reforms that became a model for the federal law passed in 2010. An average of 65.2% of employers in Massachusetts offer coverage - down only slightly from 67% a decade ago - and 72.9% of people under 65 in the state get coverage through an employer.

Terrence Frett of Frett/Barrington Limited, an insurance broker, said "I don't see a big shift in 2014." At the same time, he expects more small employers to drop coverage.

In 2011, the average annual premium in Wisconsin was:
 •  $5,414 for individual coverage, up from $2,664 in 2000.
 •  $15,024 for family coverage, up from $6,794 in 2000.

If the cost had risen at the same pace as the consumer price index, the premium would be:
 •  $3,478 as opposed to $5,414 for individual coverage
 •  $8,875 as opposed to $15,024 for family coverage.