Many Years Young: Health Insurance Cutbacks Squeeze The Insured

(Shots, NPR) "Beneath the surface what health insurance is in the country has been changing really dramatically. And just in plain language it's becoming skimpier and skimpier and less and less comprehensive," said Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a private, non-profit, non-partisan research group.

Paul Fronstin of the?Employee Benefits Research Institute?says that is the trend nationally. "Deductibles have gone up. Co-pays have gone up. You see costing-sharing for out-of-network services have gone up," Fronstin said. "It seems to have accelerated in the last few years. Health care is just continuing to take a bigger bite out of take-home pay." So even people with insurance are paying thousands of dollars out of pocket before their insurance kicks in. And even when it does, insurance picks up less then it used to?often a lot less. More than 1 in 5 Americans had a problem getting insurance to pay for a hospital, doctor or other health care in the past year, according to a?new poll?by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. Altman says this comes as many families are struggling to get by.

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