Health insurance premiums soar as wages creep

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

Health insurance premiums rose five times faster than U.S. workers' salaries this year, according to a survey released today that also showed slippage in the percentage of American workers covered by employer health plans.

Premium increases moderated slightly, rising 11.2 percent this year, compared with a 13.9 percent jump in 2003, according to the poll of 3,000 employers by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the pace of growth is five times that of both inflation and worker income.

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As I've said before, in an industrialized society health care is a right, not a consumer product. Time to put the insurance companies out of business; it's all just a protection racket, anyway.

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