Downtrodden Americans who can barely afford health care received some bad news Tuesday.
The Washington Post reported that the cost of employer-provided insurance rose 6.1 percent this year. In dollars and cents: The average premium for a family is $12,206, where $3,281 is taken care of by the worker and the employer handles the rest. For the same coverage last year, the worker paid $2,973, according to 2,000-person survey of workers and employers performed by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
And the meantime, the average annual to cover a family ($12,106) is roughly equivalent to the average annual salary a full-time worker at minimum wage earns ($12,168).
The survey also found that 75 percent of respondents said, "they were very worried" or "somewhat worried about" the rising cost of insurance. The same survey found that only 39 percent were worried about violent crimes.
Politicians have touted that our nation’s health care coverage system needs to be revamped, but it has been met with much opposition.
The Massachusetts Legislature, for example, passed a bill in the spring that requires all of its citizens to purchase medical insurance or face legal consequences. It’s a little unorthodox to treat citizens and health insurance as analogous to drivers and car insurance, but it marks the first time a state is tackling this issue in such a manner.
The bill went into effect in July, even though it will be a while until the results are released, the state is on the right track by taking the initiative. Perhaps in the end the states can solve a problem the federal government can’t handle.
