Report shows impact of rising costs of health care

Minot Daily News

By JILL SCHRAMM, Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com

About 160,000 North Dakotans will spend more than 10 percent of their pre-tax family incomes on health care this year, even though 90 percent have health-insurance coverage, according to a report released Wednesday.

The number is up about 44 percent from 2000, reported Families USA, an advocacy organization for health-care consumers, Washington, D.C. The organization used federal data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to project the numbers in its report.

About 50,000 North Dakotans will spend 25 percent of their pre-tax income on health care, an increase of almost 57 percent from 2000, the report stated. Of these, 88 percent are insured.

"As our findings make clear, high health-care costs are not just a problem of the uninsured. More and more families with insurance are affected by rising health-care costs, and for many, the burden of these costs is becoming too great to bear," Ron Pollack, executive director for Families USA, said at a teleconference Wednesday. "The growing burden of health-care costs on families is a clear signal that health-care reform is long overdue and, hopefully, will be enacted into law this year."

He listed several proposals expected to be considered in Congress, including limits on litigation, more focus on treatment effectiveness and paying for quality rather than quantity of care.

Don Morrison, executive director for the North Dakota Center for the Public Good, Bismarck, said the North Dakota Legislature approved only a small increase from 150 to 160 percent of federal poverty level in the income eligibility for children's health insurance. That was less than the 200 percent that health-care advocates had wanted, he said.

Nicole Ritter, a health-care consumer from Livingston, Mont., said her family spent about $10,000, or 20 percent of income, on health-insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses in 2008 despite having an employer-assisted health plan. The costs related to her son's asthma treatment and the routine delivery in the birth of a child last year.

Nationally, Families USA found 64.4 million Americans will spend more than 10 percent of pre-tax income on health care this year.

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/527746.html?nav=5010