Families' health-care burdens up

Nearly four million people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - about one-fifth of the population - live in households that will spend more than 10 percent of their pretax income on health care this year, according to new reports from Families USA, a Washington health-advocacy group.

In a report released yesterday, the group said 2.3 million Pennsylvanians under age 65 - 22 percent - are in households that will spend more than 10 percent on health care. That is up from 1.9 million in 2000.

In New Jersey, 1.5 million people - 19 percent - now fall into that category, up from one million in 2000.

In Pennsylvania, 88 percent of those with such high health costs have health insurance, compared with 80 percent in New Jersey and 83 percent in the nation as a whole.

In the United States, the organization said, 65.4 million people will spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care this year, up from 41.7 million in 2000.

Families USA included the cost of health insurance and medical care itself. In a telephone news conference today, Kathleen Stoll, deputy director, said the number of Americans with "unmanageably" high health expenses has grown as employers have asked workers to bear more of the cost of health insurance and chosen health plans with less coverage and higher co-payments.

"It signals that we now need health-care reform, and we believe that 2009 is the year when we will see significant health-care reform in this country," Stoll said of the new statistics.

Families USA, she said, supports changes that would help low- and moderate-income Americans by subsidizing premiums and limiting out-of-pocket expenses.