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New Study Shows Health Insurance Costs Outstripping Insurance Coverage

An issue of critical national importance is that of potentially devastating health insurance cost inflation in the face of slowing increases in family income. Working Americans are increasingly worried not only about holding onto their jobs, but also about maintaining affordable health insurance for their families.

Squeezed: How Costs for Insuring Families are Outpacing Income, a study recently published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides a state-by-state analysis of the relationship between health insurance and family income. Within Indiana, annual premiums rose 23% - an average of $2,000 - between 2001 and 2005, while median family income rose just 2% during the same period. With insurance premiums thus increasing more than 10 times faster than incomes, Indiana workers are increasingly finding themselves either uninsured or struggling to make ends meet.

For the complete Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report, click here.