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General Facts on Women and Job Based Health

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force is becoming more diverse, older and more female. Today, those changing labor force demographics are already evident in terms of the increased number of working women.

Working women are likely to be the primary decision maker for the family as well as the care giver when a family member falls ill. Therefore, women need adequate knowledge and tools to satisfy their multiple roles as decision makers and consumers of health care.

Women as Major Health Care Consumers

  • Approximately 82% of women age 18-64 had health insurance in 1998. The remaining 18% -- which translates into 16 million women -- had no health benefit coverage.

  • Thirteen percent of women obtained insurance from public programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and CHAMPUS. Seventy-three percent had private insurance. At least 49% had coverage from a private sector job.

  • Private insurance was obtained mainly through employment-based plans. Sixty-six percent of all women had such coverage, either in their own names or as dependents, 51% through private-sector jobs and 15% through government jobs.

  • Women utilize more health care than men, in part because of their need for reproductive services. Females of all ages accounted for 60% of all visits to doctors’ offices in 1998.

  • Women make three-quarters of health care decisions for their families and are more likely to be the care givers when a family member falls ill.

  • Data show that women are the primary seekers of information about their legal rights under private employment-provided health insurance, making 66% of the calls to the Department of Labor in the latest quarter of 1998.

Women with Health Insurance in Their Own Names

  • Concurrent with the growth in women’s employment has been an increase in the number of women with health insurance through their own jobs.

  • In 1998, 40% of women age 18-64, or 34 million women, had employment-based coverage in their own name. Twenty-five million or 29% had such coverage from a private-sector job.