California's Insurance Troubles

In more news from around the country, a new study from UC Berkeley's Center on Labor on California’s health care situation painted a grim picture of the future. According to the study, if health insurance rates keep rising at current levels only one half of all working California families will have job based health insurance by 2010. Rising premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are forcing many Californians to go without coverage because they cannot afford it. The study reported that for every 10% increase in premiums, 910,000 working families lose coverage nationwide. Couple that with the fact that there have been double-digit premium increases year in and year out, and you begin to get the scope of the problem.

The following are brief excerpts from an article in the SF Chronicle:

"For middle-income and low-wage workers, job-based coverage is increasing becoming completely unavailable," said Bob Brownstein, policy director for Working Partnerships, a nonprofit labor research group. "This situation places an enormous number of working families ... at grave risk of economic or medical crisis."

“The report doesn't paint an exaggerated sky-is-falling scenario, said Tim Biddle, senior vice president in the San Francisco office of the Segal Co., an employee-benefit and actuarial consulting firm.

"The sky is falling," Biddle said. "Employers are starting to hit the wall in what they can afford in terms of health care."’