“In recent years, employer-sponsored health insurance has become less adequate in providing financial protection for all kinds of health care services,” said Avni Gupta , a PhD student in the Department of Public Health Policy and Management at NYU School of Global Public Health and the lead author of the JAMA analysis. The majority of working-age adults in the U.S. (61% as of 2019) obtain health insurance coverage through their employers. Despite improvements in employer-sponsored insurance by the Affordable Care Act—including extending parents’ coverage to uninsured young adults, eliminating copays and deductibles for preventive services, and implementing maternal care coverage—health care costs and out-of-pocket expenditures have continued to rise. Using the National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative annual survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the researchers analyzed data from 2000 to 2020 for m...