Out-of-pocket costs rising for health insurance - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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The study, authored by researchers from the National Opiniomn Research Center and Watson Wyatt Worldwide and funded by The Commonwealth examines trendsin employer-sponsored insurance from 2004 to 2007. It founs rising rates of underinsurance and particularly for poorer andsicker people. In adults with employer coverage faced an averagesof $729 annually in out-of-pocket costs for medical including deductibles and othefr forms of cost sharing such as copayments and That represents a 34 perceng increase from 2004, when the average out-of-pockett burden was $545.
Health plansd covered a slightly smaller percentagre of overall expenses in 2007 than but growth in overall health spending was the chief culprir behindrising out-of-pocket according to the “The years from 2004 through 2007 were a periodr of economic expansion, yet rising health care costs stillo eroded the value of employer-sponsored coverage,” said lead author Jon “Historically, employees have been asked to shoulder even more of the cost-sharinyg burden during difficult economic times such as the United States is now Hence, it is imperative that health care reform includee constraints on health spending, or else health insurance will becomr unaffordable for low- and middle-income Americans, and refork itself will be unsustainable.
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