Released yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation?s annual report on employer-based insurance reveals that an increasing number of small businesses are canceling, restricting or charging employees more for their health insurance. In the twelve months from the first quarter of 2001 the number of businesses with between three and nine employees that do not offer any health benefits to their workers rose by three percent to forty-five percent---an increase that means an additional 150,000 Americans with no health insurance. In the same period companies have increased drug co-payments, cut coverage of retirees, and raised the premiums that employees pay for health insurance by 12.7 percent overall and by fourteen percent among companies with under fifty employees.
See "Small Employers Severely Reduce Health Benefits", MILT FREUDENHEIM, The New York Times, September 5, 2002