{"id":2184,"date":"2011-09-27T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T14:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2011-09-27T12:10:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T16:10:00","slug":"why-is-new-hampshire-second-in-the-nation-for-employees-with-health-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/09\/27\/why-is-new-hampshire-second-in-the-nation-for-employees-with-health-insurance\/","title":{"rendered":"Why New Hampshire Is Second In The Nation For Employees With Health Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Andreas Rentz \/ Getty Images<\/p>

New Hampshire ranks second in the nation for insured employees.<\/p><\/div>\n

The US Census Bureau <\/a>delivered some interesting numbers that are difficult to understand. New Hampshire’s private sector workers have the second highest rate of health insurance in the US. Massachusetts, with its mandated coverage, is number one. That state requires larger employers to provide health\u00a0insurance to employees.\u00a0But how did New Hampshire with its relatively small number of large businesses and its\u00a0mostly hands off approach to government regulation get the number two spot?<\/p>\n

“New Hampshire has been a competitive market for a long time,” says Jean Ryer, program director of Endowment for Health<\/a>. “For larger employers offering health coverage has been the norm,” she says.\u00a0 That’s\u00a0in part because historically the state has had low unemployment rates and fewer people looking for work.\u00a0 That means the state’s large employers have had to compete to attract workers.\u00a0 They’ve chosen to do that by offering health insurance.<\/p>\n

“We’re still having trouble finding a skilled workforce for so-called ‘smart manufacturing,'” says Andrienne Rupp, Vice President of the Business and Industry Association of New Hampshire<\/a>.\u00a0Specifically, she says,\u00a0hi-tech\u00a0and component manufacturers\u00a0are looking for\u00a0workers. “Health\u00a0insurance has long been a valuable\u00a0benefit for employers,” Rupp says.<\/p>\n

But New\u00a0Hampshire employers pay\u00a0some of the highest health insurance rates in the US–and those rates continue to go up.<\/p>\n

“This is a time of drastic cutbacks in coverage and costs are being shifted\u00a0to employees,” says Jean Ryer of Endowment for Health, “The quality of coverage has eroded over time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Census Bureau delivered some interesting numbers that are difficult to understand. New Hampshire’s private sector workers have the second highest rate of health insurance in the US. Massachusetts, with its mandated coverage, is number one. That state requires larger employers to provide health\u00a0insurance to employees.\u00a0But how did New Hampshire with its relatively small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[175,539,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2184"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}