Reply #78: I wonder how many people who have insurance benefits paid by their employer [View All]

[marzipanni]

know how much their premiums cost.

Read about one horrendous padded bill for hospitalization for a three year old child-
http://www.heynorton.org/blog/2006/06/dr_no_and_the_m.html
and I wonder how much this father's employer paid for HMO coverage so that the HMO would only have to pay ~half, if that, of the charges.

<snip>-
The new mood for reform is coming from employers and state governments struggling under rising health care costs; from policymakers wanting to replace the fragmented system with a unified one that covers everybody; and from the uninsured, a group that now approaches 47 million.

But there is another group that eventually may exert a more powerful impact on the debate: people who have coverage but sense that it's dangling by a fraying thread.

"The core motivation is that for the last few years health insurance premiums have been going up faster than earnings," says Paul Ginsburg, president of the Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change. "That means there are a lot of people who have insurance but feel vulnerable to losing it."

The stark realities of U.S. coverage

* About 18,000 people a year die prematurely because they lack insurance.
* People file for bankruptcy at a rate of one every 30 seconds because of medical bills.
* The average employer-based family premium rose 87 percent from 2000 to 2006, to $11,500.
* Fewer than 60 percent of people under 65 have employer coverage, down from 70 percent in 1987.

In Pennsylvania, for example, family health premiums increased by 75.6 percent from 2000 to 2006, compared with a 13.3 percent increase in median wages.
more:
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/yourlife/healingoursystem.html