Amid Bad Economy, Rising Health Care Premiums Slam Consumers, Small Businesses
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 – Even as Americans struggle with a recession and
the highest unemployment rate since 1983, health insurance companies
have jacked up their premiums again.
The average cost of family health coverage climbed again last year, to
$13,375 for a family of four, according to new data released today by
the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research Educational Trust.
“This is unbelievable. With a contracting economy, shrinking job
opportunities and deflation driving down prices in many sectors, the
only thing that went up last year was your insurance company’s
premiums,” said Rebecca Alper from NJPIRG.
Health insurance costs have gone up even more for employees at small
firms, according to the new report, entitled Employer Health Benefits
2009 Annual Survey. Those working at firms with between three and 199
employees spend over a thousand dollars a year more on family coverage
than those at larger firms.
“Small businesses and the families and communities that depend on them
are getting killed by these cost increases. Congress can’t wait any
longer to pass health reform,” Alper noted.
NJPIRG’s recent report, The Small Business Dilemma, details its own
survey of the impact of high health costs on small businesses and its
Making Health Care Work campaign has been working nationwide to
mobilize consumers and small businesses in support of reform.
KRR/HRET’s new report also compared this year’s data with the previous
nine years, finding a 131 percent increase in total cost of family
coverage in the past 10 years.
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NJPIRG is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy
organization. For more information visit us at http://www.njpirg.org or
http://www.uspirg.org.
For more on U.S. PIRG’s health care reform campaign, click here.
