Throughout the U.S., health care premiums and medical costs are skyrocketing while health coverage is shrinking. This is the conclusion of two new reports, one from Health Care for America NOW (HCAN) and the other from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Published in June 2009 by HCAN, Health Insurance Coverage Keeps Shrinking as Premiums, Family Costs Climb Ever Higher (pdf) draws on research from The Kaiser Family Foundation, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The State Health Access Data Assistance Center, and other sources to document the trend of rising costs and shrinking health coverage in all 50 American states.

“Across the economic spectrum of families,” the report says, “the upward march of premiums and out-of-pocket costs has been unnerving. . . . High medical costs, decreased benefits, and rising costs have real effects on the quality of care available to families.”

Specific findings include the following:

• In the past nine years, U.S. wages grew 29 percent while the cost of health insurance rose 120 percent.
• Experts forecast that 50 million Americans will be uninsured next year due to high premiums.
• Lack of health insurance causes 22,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
• Health insurers are increasingly limiting benefits to save money.
• 62 percent of bankruptcy filers in 2007 said medical bills contributed to their debts.

The report says in its executive summary that these trends are “battering family budgets, eroding U.S. competitiveness in the global economy and threatening the American standard of living, once the envy of the world.”

By way of recommendation, the report suggests that:

As President Barack Obama and his economic advisers have repeatedly said, health costs are increasing at an unsustainable rate, and the national economy will not thrive unless they are reined in. Health care reform that guarantees quality, affordable care for everyone in the United States—and offers the choice of a public health insurance plan—can do what our private health insurance system has failed to do: provide economic security for families and the nation.

Separately, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a report on June 23 titled “Hidden Costs of Health Care: Why Americans Are Paying More but Getting Less.” The report states that

With each passing year, Americans are paying more for health care coverage. 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. Americans pay more than ever for health insurance, but get less coverage.

It goes on to identify rising deductibles, higher copayments, and rising out-of-pocket costs as the “hidden costs” of American health care.

Carol Regan, who directs the PHI Health Care for Health Care Workers initiative, said, “As some of America’s lowest paid workers, direct-care workers often cannot afford the high cost of health care. A good litmus test for the effectiveness of national health care reform is whether it provides comprehensive, affordable coverage to these workers, who themselves provide a valuable health care service.”