Sep 21 2009
During Sunday’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Obama, while promoting his proposal for an individual mandate that would require every US citizen and legal alien to have health insurance, claimed that the average family is paying “$900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care”.
Health Care researchers, however, believe the President is vastly overstating the impact that the uninsured have on the cost of health insurance premiums.
Aug 21 2009
The non-profit, non-partisan group Families USA has begun releasing state-by-state reports comparing the rise in health insurance premiums against the rise of wages from 2000 to 2009. So far 18 state reports have been released, with the remaining states coming over the next few weeks.
Copies of reports for each state, in pdf format, can be found here.
The reports specifically look at premiums for families, and compare the increase in those family premiums with the rise in median income. And, surprise surprise, health insurance rates have skyrocketed compared to average wage increases. On average, for the 18 states reported on so far, family premiums increased 4.4 times as much as median wages between 2000 and 2009. The following is a spreadsheet I put together to summarize the results of each report:
[ratio is how many times faster premiums have risen compared to wages]