You talkin' to me?...

Four of Five U.S. Part-Timers Lack Employer Health Insurance
By Kelly Proctor
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Four of every five part-time workers in the U.S. lack employer-sponsored health insurance, a study released today reports.

By comparison, about one of every four full-time employees is without such insurance, according to the study conducted by the Iowa Policy Project, a nonprofit public policy research group in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

The study analyzed insurance coverage for ``nonstandard'' employees, such as part-time, temporary or contract workers. About 34.3 million Americans, or 25 percent of the nation's workforce, fall into that category, according to the study.

The research ``demonstrates the weakness in our health insurance system'' for a ``vulnerable group of workers,'' said Sara Collins, a senior program officer with the Commonwealth Fund, a New York nonprofit group that financed the research.

The study, based on 2001 census data and telephone surveys by the researchers in 2003 and 2004, found 21 percent of nonstandard employees had health insurance through their jobs, compared with 74 percent of full-time workers.

Read the rest of the article here. There's lots more on this general topic at UC Berkeley's labor center website. Also, you can read a piece that I co-authored with Helene Jorgensen called "Permatemps" in The American Prospect.