HHS Secretary Kathlene Sebelius today released a report detailing the hidden costs of health care in America. All kinds of details about us paying more while getting less, the rising cost of deductibles, co-payments, out-of-pocket expenses.
Highlights:
- A person with employer-based coverage paid an average of $1,522 on health care (not including premiums) in 2006, compared with $1,260 in 2001. When including the added burden of higher premiums, out-of-pocket costs rose even more sharply, with a 30 percent increase from an average of $2,827 in 2001 to $3,744 in 2006.
- Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have nearly doubled since 2000, a rate three times faster than wages. In 2008, the average premium for a family plan purchased through an employer was $12,680, nearly the annual earnings of a full-time minimum wage job.
- For preferred provider organization (PPO) plans purchased through an employer, the average family deductible increased 30 percent in just two years, from $1,034 to $1,344. This effect is more pronounced for small firms, where PPO deductibles increased from $1,439 to $2,367 — a rise of 64 percent.
- In 2004, only one in five people with health insurance through an employer had a co-payment of more than $25, but by 2008 the number jumped to one in three.
Click here to read the report.
Stay tuned for Mitch McConnell to hold a press conference about how fake these America-hating statistics are.
1 response so far ↓
1 eric schansberg // Jun 23, 2009 at 10:12 pm
And that doesn’t include the part “paid by the employer”, which is really a trade-off for workers– receiving a tax-free (subsidized) benefit through the firm vs. the higher wages we would receive instead.
The good news: higher premia will encourage people to pursue “catastrophic” health insurance– i.e., true insurance– instead of the over-coverage we have today that causes all sorts of problems with costs, portability, rationing, etc.
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