Introduction

Throughout the first six years of the new millennium, health care costs have skyrocketed, while working families’ wages have stood still. Other factors have also buffeted families’ economic well-being, including fluctuating gasoline prices and the recent downturn in real estate markets, but nothing has caused as much damage to family pocketbooks as the confluence of stagnant wages and rising health care costs. Numerous national studies have documented this damage.

As important as these studies are, they do not reflect the varying burdens experienced by families in different states. Just as labor markets, health systems, and economic circumstances vary from one state to another, the consequences of rising health care costs and stagnant earnings differ considerably among the 50 states.

Families USA has undertaken the first state-by-state analysis of growing health care premiums versus stagnant earnings over the past six years. This report, which is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Health and Human Services, examines the impact of changes in employer-based health insurance premiums and earnings in Texas.

Over the past six years (2000 to 2006), family health insurance premiums for Texas’s workers rose 7.4 times more quickly than median earnings. On average, family health care premiums rose by 79.7 percent, while median earnings rose by only 10.8 percent.

In addition to higher premiums, working families faced higher out-of-pocket health care costs, such as deductibles, copayments, and costs for services that were no longer covered by their insurance plans. As a result, health care costs are absorbing an ever-larger portion of family budgets, and it is clear why many Texas families feel worse off economically than they did six years ago.    

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Full Report
(pdf version)

Stagnant U.S.Earnings Illustration

Press Release