Health insurance availability at the workplace - How important are worker preferences?

Analysts have frequently interpreted the uneven distribution Of health insu rance across firms of caving size as evidence of insurance market failure i n the small group market. We explore an additional explanation by consideri ng the relationship between employee preferences for health insurance and i ts availability at the workplace. We apply a simple model of job choice to data front the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey to examine whether, workers with weak preferences for health insurance sort themselves into job s without coverage. Our results for a sample of single workers are consiste nt with such sorting behavior.