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

http://fchsband.org/info/fchs_medical_release.php
The study, authored by researcheres from the National Opinion Research Centee and Watson Wyatt Worldwide and funded by The Commonwealth examines trendsin employer-sponsored insurance from 2004 to 2007. It founds rising rates of underinsuranc eand unaffordability, particularly for poorer and sicker people. In 2007, adults with employer coveragd faced an averageof $729 annually in out-of-pocket costes for medical services, including deductibles and othetr forms of cost sharing such as copaymentsa and coinsurance.
That represents a 34 percent increase from when theaverage out-of-pocket burden was Health plans covered a slightly smaller percentage of overalkl expenses in 2007 than 2004, but growthy in overall health spending was the chiefv culprit behind rising out-of-pocket costs, according to the “The years from 2004 through 2007 were a period of economi expansion, yet rising health care costes still eroded the value of employer-sponsorec coverage,” said lead author Jon “Historically, employees have been asked to shoulderd even more of the cost-sharing burden during difficult economic timeas such as the United Statesd is now experiencing.
Hence, it is imperative that health care reform includwe constraints onhealth spending, or else health insurance will becomew unaffordable for low- and middle-incomre Americans, and reform itself will be unsustainable.”