Healthcare Coverage Provided by Oklahoma Firms

 One topic that arouses much public discussion and is of special interest to both employers and public policy planners is the quantity and extent of Oklahoma healthcare plan coverage.  Our recent OESC 2005 Benefits Survey collected a great deal of information relevant to this concern.  Of the six questions on the survey that address healthcare, responses to two of them provide information concerning plan availability and the number of firms paying different portions of their employees’ healthcare plans.  Information gathered from responses to these two questions is provided in GRAPH A (above) and GRAPH B (below).  The information in these two graphs is presented according to ten industries, an aggregate of all industries, and by firm size.  Firm size is defined as small firms having 5 - 49 employees, medium firms as having 50 - 249 employees and large firms as having 250 or more employees.

            GRAPH A provides information concerning the percent of firms that either do not offer their employees a healthcare plan or do not pay for any of the cost of a healthcare plan that they do offer.  As can be seen from this graph, the percent of firms not offering or cost assisting their employees with plans varies widely according to industry.  More than 50% of Construction and Retail Trade firms either do not provide plans, or do not cost assist their employees with their plans.  On the other hand, the percentage of the same for Mining, Manufacturing and Public Administration is around 20% or less.  Overall (All Industries), about 40% of the firms in our population do not offer or cost assist their employees with healthcare plans.

            The percent of firms not offering and cost assisting employees with healthcare plans also varies according to firm size.  Although generally speaking the larger firms within an industry more often offer plans or cost assistance, in Mining this is not the case.  As compared to less than 20% for smaller Mining firms, about 25% of large Mining firms do not offer or cost assist their employees with healthcare plans.  Conversely, all of the large Construction firms and all of the medium and large Utility firms in our sample offer a plan or cost assist their employees with their plans.  Additionally, overall (All Industry) less than 4% of All Industry large firms do not offer or cost assist their employees with their healthcare plans, as opposed to over 43% for small firms that do not do this.

            GRAPH B provides information concerning the percent of firms that pay for more than half, or greater than 50% of their employees’ (dependents not included) healthcare plans.  The percentage of firms that pay this portion of their employees’ healthcare plans varies widely across industries.  Less than 50% of Construction, Retail Trade, Services and All Other Industries pay this portion of the cost of their employees’ healthcare plans, while close to 70% of Manufacturing and over 70% of Public Administration and Mining pay this portion.  Overall (All Industries), 45% of firms pay more than half of the cost of their employees healthcare plans.

            Generally speaking, within an industry a greater percent of large firms pay more than half of the cost of their employees’ healthcare plans than do medium firms and a greater percent of medium firms pay this portion of their employees’ healthcare cost than do small firms.  However, comparing the ranges of within industry differences across all industries demonstrates that the percents and the differences between percents can vary widely.  For example, in Mining the percent for the three sizes of firms paying this portion of healthcare plan cost are similar and around 70%, while in Retail Trade the percent for small firms is about 25% and the percent for large firms is about 65%.  Overall (All Industries), the percent of firms paying this portion of their employees’ healthcare plan cost is 42% for small firms, 61% for medium firms and almost 76% for large firms.

            Additional information concerning healthcare coverage provided by Oklahoma firms may be viewed in our 2005 Benefit Survey Report, located on our website at:  5http://www.oesc.state.ok.us/lmi/Survey/BS/benefits_survey.htm.  As well as providing numbers and percentages of firms offering different benefits, our survey report also provides numbers and percentages for employees receiving different benefits, including healthcare benefits.  The two differ somewhat.  Two graphs reporting the statistics for “Employees Not Receiving or Self Paying for Healthcare Plans” and  “Employees at Firms That Pay 50% or More of Healthcare Plan’s Cost” may be viewed as below.

Jesse Fuchs, Methodologist/Statistical Specialist

Phone: (405)-557-5345

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