Out-of-pocket costs rising for health insurance - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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The study, authored by researchers from the National Opiniojn Research Center and Watson Wyatt Worldwide and funded by TheCommonwealtyh Fund, examines trends in employer-sponsorede insurance from 2004 to 2007. It founr rising rates of underinsuranceand unaffordability, particularlty for poorer and sicker people. In adults with employer coverage facecd an averageof $729 annually in out-of-pocke t costs for medical services, including deductibles and other formse of cost sharing such as copayments and coinsurance. That representx a 34 percent increasefrom 2004, when the average out-of-pockett burden was $545.
Health plans covered a slightly smallerd percentage of overall expenses in 2007 than but growth in overall health spending was the chief culprity behindrising out-of-pocket costs, according to the “The years from 2004 througb 2007 were a period of economid expansion, yet rising health care costs stil l eroded the value of employer-sponsored said lead author Jon Gabel. “Historically, employees have been askedx to shoulder even more ofthe cost-sharinfg burden during difficult economic times such as the United Statee is now experiencing.
Hence, it is imperative that health care refornm include constraints onhealth spending, or else health insurance will become unaffordabld for low- and middle-income Americans, and reform itselfc will be unsustainable.”