Every year, fewer people have health insurance, and those that do are paying more and more to hold on to it. That's as true in Illinois as it is in the rest of the country according to a report (PDF) out today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Foundation commissioned an analysis of U.S. coverage to better understand "the cost of family health insurance premiums as compared to income." The study reveals not only the skyrocketing cost of coverage, but also the number of those who have been left behind completely. Before we take a look at the Prairie State, here are some of the findings on the national scale:
Nationally, the average cost of family coverage increased nearly $2,500—from $8,281 in 2001 to $10,728 in 2005. The percentage of family premiums that employees pay held steady at about 24 percent. The amount that workers pay for family premiums, on average, increased $664, from $1,921 in 2001 to $2,585 in 2005. Meanwhile, the median income of people who hold family health insurance policies increased just $1,250 during the same period, from $40,818 in 2001 to $42,068 in 2005.
The news is not any better in Illinois. Not only is the cost of coverage up, but fewer and fewer jobs are offering insurance at all. The report shows that 26,627 less employers offered private health insurance in 2005 than in 2001. That amounts to 660,000 jobs that lost medical benefits during that five year span.
(More after the jump ...)
The Chicago Tribune's medical reporter Judith Graham offered some reasons why:
Driving the trend are soaring medical costs – a consequence of more medical services and more expensive technologies -- that make health insurance ever more expensive for workers and employers [...]
It’s why an unexpected spike in medical expenses being reported by insurance companies is so alarming.
If that lasts for a while, the implications appear clear. To maintain profits, insurers will have to raise rates, which will intensify cost pressures on employers, which in turn will induce more businesses to drop health insurance and expand the ranks of the uninsured.
As Graham indicates, insurers can clear more profit by insuring fewer people but charging more. That kind of arrangement serves neither employers nor employees, and makes many wonder why a for-profit arrangement is still (seemingly) the preferred way of answering the health care crisis.
The tide may be turning. Recently, a survey showed that 59 percent of U.S. physicians support national health insurance. Here in Illinois, House Bill 311 would establish a state based single payer system. Facing long odds, the legislation passed out of committee earlier this month and may be headed to a full vote in the House. As the U.S. health care crisis deepens, we may see more people taking another look at single payer as an answer to our insurance woes.
Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Photodu.de.
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