WASHINGTON, D.C. — About 85,000 more Ohioans are in families that could pay at least 10 percent of their pre-tax income for health care this year over last year, according to consumer-health advocate Families USA.
That’s an increase of about 4 percent. The Washington, D.C., advocacy group put the number at 2.28 million this year, up from about 2.2 million in 2008. That increase is slightly larger than the population of Parma, Ohio, according to U.S. Census Bureau numbers.
Most of those families — about 86 percent — have health insurance, according to an estimate by The Lewin Group for Families USA. Lewin Group is a health care consultancy that is part of UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest U.S. health insurers. That number essentially stayed the same as last year.
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“As our findings make clear, high health care costs are not just a problem of the uninsured,” Ron Pollack, executive director for Families USA, said in a written statement. “More and more families with insurance are affected by rising health care costs, and, for many, the burden of these costs is becoming too great to bear.”
In addition, 615,000 Ohio residents are in families that could pay more than 25 percent of their pre-tax income for health insurance this year, Families USA said in its report. That’s 26,000 more people – or 4 percent — than in 2008, according to the Lewin Group analysis.
Families USAÂ said the numbers of both groups combined “climbed dramatically in Ohio, a symptom of the runaway costs plaguing the U.S. health care system.”
