How Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Differs at Big and Small Businesses

Many people are aware that big companies are much more likely than small businesses to offer employer-sponsored health insurance to their employees. TheMedical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), an annual effort to query nearly 40,000 establishments, conducted by the Federal Government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that only 34.8 percent of private sector establishments with fewer than 50 employees provided workers with health care coverage in 2013, as compared with 95.7 percent of those with 50 or more workers.

Bigger companies are also more likely than smaller ones to offer health care coverage to retirees. The 2013 MEPS reveals that only 1.3 percent of business locations with fewer than 50 workers offered health insurance to retirees under the age of 65, and only 2.3 percent offered it to older retirees. By contrast, 23.5 percent of private sector establishments with 50 or more workers provided health insurance to retirees under the age of 65, and 19.5 percent offered it to retirees over 65.

How Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Differs at Big and Small Businesses