Missouri health insurance premium jump outpaces U.S. average, study says

Missouri health insurance premiums have soared while Missouri incomes remained flat, according to a new report released this week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The report, based on a study by the University of Minnesota, said family health insurance premiums for Missourians who have job-sponsored coverage jumped an average of 36 percent between 2001 and 2005. Premiums are the combined contributions of employers and employees.

The premium increase in Missouri exceeded the average U.S. increase of 30 percent during the same period. The average increase in Kansas was 8 percent.

The corresponding increase in median income for U.S. health policyholders was 3 percent during the study period, while the income earned by Missouri policyholders was unchanged. The report did not include income numbers for Kansas because the sample size was too small.

“This study makes plain what every working parent knows — that providing insurance coverage takes a bigger bite from the family budget every year,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, said in a release. “As costs continue to go up, fewer people can pay their portion of the premium, and fewer employers are able to offer insurance benefits.”

The report said the average annual U.S. family premium cost — including the employer’s share and the employee’s share of the premium — rose from $8,281 in 2001 to $10,728 in 2005. In Missouri, the cost increased from $7,332 to $9,948. The average cost in Kansas rose from $9,012 to $9,734.

The report said the average amount that U.S. workers pay toward family health premiums rose from $1,921 in 2001 to $2,585 in 2005, an increase of 35 percent. The workers’ share of premium costs was not broken out by state.

“There’s no surprise here,” said William Bruning, president of the Mid-America Coalition on Health Care in Kansas City. “It’s been well recognized for a generation that health-care cost increases are averaging well above inflation increases, and in some years by a multiple of three or four.”

Bruning said most employers have tried to at least partially absorb health premium increases and shield their workers from price increases.

“But over such an extended period of significant cost increase, they have lost their ability to continue to buffer their employees,” Bruning said. “Unless there is a fundamental change to the health-care delivery system, there’s no reason to expect these trends to abate.”

The study was conducted by researchers at the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota. Researchers used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The report was released to coincide with Cover the Uninsured Week, a nonpartisan campaign by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advocate for health coverage for all Americans.

“With our economy sputtering, more than 47 million people already uninsured and millions more worried about losing their coverage, the plight of the uninsured cannot continue to be ignored,” Lavizzo-Mourey said.