Benefits Bust

No Job-Paid Health, No Pension and More Time to Miss Them

Today, surveys indicate, fewer than 30 percent of current or future early retirees have or will have medical insurance from their employers, and fewer than 25 percent of Medicare-eligible retirees have such coverage. The picture is better at large companies, but the trend is the same. In 1991, surveys find, 88 percent of early retirees from companies with 1,000 or more workers had company-sponsored medical insurance; by 2002, the figure was 72 percent. Among Medicare-eligible retirees from big companies, those covered dropped from 80 percent to 61 percent in the same period.

Disappearing health benefits mirror an even greater peril of the times: the disappearing employer pension.

In the 1930s, when Social Security was enacted, life expectancy was barely 65 -- less for men -- so the number of retirees the program could expect to support was small. Now, overall life expectancy is approaching 80, and for 65-year-olds it is into the mid-eighties. The number of years men spend in retirement has climbed from 11.5 in 1950-55 to 18.1 in 1995-2000.