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

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The study, authored by researchers from the Nationa Opinion Research Center and Watson Wyattr Worldwide and funded by The Commonwealth examines trendsin employer-sponsored insurance from 2004 to 2007. It founsd rising rates of underinsurance and particularly for poorer andsicker people. In adults with employer coverage faced an averageof $729 annuallu in out-of-pocket costs for medicao services, including deductibles and other forms of cost sharingh such as copayments and coinsurance. That represents a 34 percen increasefrom 2004, when the averags out-of-pocket burden was $545.
Healthy plans covered a slightly smalletr percentage of overall expenses in 2007 than but growth in overallo health spending was the chief culprig behindrising out-of-pocket costs, according to the “The years from 2004 through 2007 were a perioxd of economic expansion, yet rising health care costs stilpl eroded the value of employer-sponsorede coverage,” said lead author Jon Gabel. employees have been asked to shoulder even more ofthe cost-sharing burden during difficult economic times such as the Unitedf States is now experiencing.
Hence, it is imperative that healthj care reform include constraints onhealth spending, or else healtg insurance will become unaffordable for low- and middle-income Americans, and reforn itself will be unsustainable.”