That potentially good news could help ease the drain on the wallets of Americans who have faced rising out-of-pocket expenses since 2001 that have been worsened by rising unemployment and a credit crunch that has been fueled in part by the slumping housing market.
Although the poor are hardest hit by rising prices for items that include food, gasoline, electricity and health care, sharply rising costs are affecting most Americans to some extent.
According to a national study supported in part by the Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February edition of Health Affairs,more than one in six Americans lived in a family that spent more than 10 percent of its after tax income on health care. Some 17.7 percent of the non-elderly population spent more than 10 percent of their after tax income on health care in 2004 up from 15.9 percent in 2001.
The study defined such people as having a high financial burden.
Researchers also found that most of the people who were having such a high financial burden had private insurance policies, with most of them getting coverage under group policies from employers rather than individual policies.
Out-of-pocket health care expenses for premiums and services rose by 21 percent, with average out-of-pocket payments increasing by $553 to $3,211 annually. The increase in from 2001 to 2004 was measured in dollars adjusted for inflation.
"Many families with private insurance-especially those with low incomes-are having difficulty paying medical bills," HSC Senior Fellow Peter J. Cunningham, Ph.D., coauthor of the study with Jessica S. Banthin and Didem M. Bernard of AHRQ, said in a statement.
