Family premium costs for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen 62 percent between 2003 and 2011, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
Premium costs have grown far ahead of average family incomes, which grew by 11 percent over the last eight years, the report found, while average deductibles for both employees at both large and small organizations offering health benefits more than doubled.
Nationally, average premiums for family coverage, shared by both employers and employees, were about $15,000 in 2011. Employee share of premium costs averaged $3,962 in 2011, compared to $2,283 in 2003, according to the report.
2011 premium totals for family coverage ranged from $12,474 to $13,211 in the states with the lowest costs -- Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa, Tennessee and Idaho -- and from $16,273 to $16,953 in the five highest-cost states, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Washington D.C., New York and Vermont.
The growth in premiums has been especially troublesome for lower- and middle-income families, the report's authors write. Already seeing wage stagnation during the 2000s, on top of the Great Recession, average middle class families are "spending a greater percentage of their income and total compensation from work on health insurance premiums, often with greater out-of-pocket cost-sharing and less comprehensive benefits."
In New Mexico, South Carolina and West Virginia, average premiums in 2011 exceeded 25 percent of median incomes, and many states with premiums above the national average have household incomes below the national average, according to the report. The state with the highest premium costs, though, was Massachusetts, which also has one of the highest per capita incomes. The average cost of family premiums in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois now account for about 20 percent of median income.
The Commonwealth Fund's analysis is based on data from the federal government's annual surveys of employers, conducted for the insurance component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
In related healthcare cost news, a recent analysis by Deloitte found that U.S. healthcare spending in 2010 totalled $3.2 trillion, about 23 percent higher than official estimates.
Whether or not the country's health spending problems are worse than they've previously looked, analysts from the New York City-based Commonwealth Fund are optimistic that various provisions of the Affordable Care Act will help in some small way in the near future.
Commonwealth Fund analysts say if annual premium growth slows by at least one percent by 2020, the average family with an employer-sponsored health plan would save about $2,000 annually.
The Commonwealth Fund's map showing percentage of state population with average premium costs that are above median incomes:
Average toal premium costs by state in 2011:
