Who is Self-Funding Healthcare and Why?

This is Sally Pipes writing at Forbes:   

Self-insurance used to be solely the province of large companies. About 80 percent of companies that employ 1,000 or more workers self-insure, according to the RAND Corporation — but only 8 percent of those with fewer than 50 workers do so.

Thanks to Obamacare, that’s changing. A RAND analysis found that a fifth of firms with 50-200 workers had self-insured by 2010, the year Obamacare became law — up from 14 percent of such companies in 2006.

A survey by Munich Health North America found that 82 percent of health insurance executives report seeing growing interest in self-funded coverage among employers. A California-based benefits consulting firm that helps companies self-insure told Kaiser Health News that its business has doubled in the past six months. And Cigna says that it saw self-coverage for small businesses grow by a fifth last year.