Health insurance average: $12,106

Health insurance premiums for the average family topped $12,000 in 2006 - more than the cost of an economy car - according to an annual survey released yesterday.

It's a fact health-benefits consultant Ivy Silver understands all too well. She spent the morning yesterday with a client - a nonprofit agency that helps disadvantaged women.

The agency offers health insurance to its 100-plus employees, but "we were talking about how to get their employees' children into CHIP, because they know a lot of their employees can't afford the cost of dependent care," said Silver, president of the Commonwealth Consulting Group Inc., of Jenkintown.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program is a federal program for low-income children ineligible for Medicaid but without access to private health insurance.

Silver notes the irony: The agency's social workers have to help their own colleagues get their children into a government-funded health insurance program covering children of low-income families.

She has switched insurance carriers to lower costs for her employees. "It's a rate-chasing game," she said.

At a news conference yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks annual health insurance costs, used survey numbers to explain what appeared to be a contradiction:

At a time when the rate of increases in the cost of health insurance is slowing - down to 6.1 percent this year, compared with a 13.9 increase in 2003 - the intensity of the discussion on health care has picked up.

That's because, the report shows, premium costs for health insurance have risen 78 percent since 2001, while inflation has gone up 17 percent and wages are up 19 percent.

"It's the growing anxiety on the part of the public which is moving health care up the political agenda," said Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the California-based foundation.

Voters surveyed in a Kaiser poll, taken last month, said health care was the second-most-important issue, behind the Iraq war.

Kaiser's benefits survey showed:

Annual premiums average $12,106 for families, with workers, on average, picking up $3,281 of the cost. Coverage for singles costs $4,479, with individuals paying $694.

Workers in companies with fewer than 200 employees pay a larger share of the premiums for family coverage than do their counterparts in larger companies.

The percentage of small companies offering coverage is declining, down to 45 percent for businesses with fewer than 10 employees. Coverage in midsize companies also is on the decline.

About 40 percent of the 3,000 companies surveyed plan to shift more costs to employees. Three percent say they may drop coverage.

Increasing numbers of employees are dropping out of their companies' insurance plans. The uninsured number 46.5 million, according to the Census Bureau's most recent report.

Insurance costs rose 6.1 percent between 2006 and 2007; wages rose 3.7 percent and inflation 2.6 percent.

Study coauthor Jon Gabel said political pressure on Blue Cross-Blue Shield health insurers, such as Independence Blue Cross, has helped keep increases relatively low.

The Blues are close to the statutory limits on their surplus in some states, Gabel said. The pressure to keep surpluses down forces the Blues to keep premiums lower, which affects their competitors. Surplus refers to the money that remains after all liabilities have been subtracted from an insurer's assets.

Independence Blue Cross, the region's largest health insurer, has not reached a statutory limit with its surplus, now at $1.7 billion, according to its 2006 report.