Family Health Insurance Premium Costs Rose 9 percent in 2011
According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the annual cost of premiums for family health insurance averaged over $15,000 in 2011. That was a 9 percent increase over the previous year. Salaries increased at a much lower rate, which means that the health-insurance premiums were taking a bigger bite out of workers’ income.
Employers paid most of the premium costs, paying an average of $10,944 for the year for family health insurance. Workers, though, still had to pay an average of $4,129 for the yearly premium costs.
The annual cost of health insurance premiums for workers who got coverage only for themselves, as individuals, was $5,429 in 2011. That was an increase of 8 percent over the cost in the previous year. The rate of increase for workers getting individual health insurance plans was only slightly less than the rate of increase for workers who had family plans. Of the $5,429 annual cost, workers paid an average of $921 out of their own pockets.
Salaries increased by an average of only 2.1 percent in 2011, and inflation was 3.2 percent. The increase in health-insurance premiums was significantly higher.
The study also found that 60 percent of companies offered health insurance to their employees, a rate which was essentially unchanged from previous years.
The Kaiser study was based on surveys conduced in January and May of 2011. It is the 13th annual study that the Kaiser Family Foundation has conducted. Researchers at the University of Chicago also worked on the study.
This article has been written by the German Finance site Financial Tombstones. They are producers of tombstones for financial deals and covering the financial market.
Filed in: Business news, Health