NPR

Employees Start To Feel The Squeeze Of High-Deductible Health Plans

The average deductible for employer-sponsored health insurance has quadrupled in the last 12 years. A Los Angeles Times investigation finds even insured workers are going without needed medical care.
Clarisa Corber at work at a Topeka, Kan., insurance agency. Corber and her husband — who have three kids, a health plan and $15,000 in medical debt — were profiled in a recent <em>Los Angeles Times</em> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-health-insurance-medical-debt-20190502-story.html">investigation into the effects of high-deductible health plans</a>.

Workers with a steady paycheck already know that wages have been stubbornly slow to rise. Meanwhile, those who get health insurance through a job have seen their deductibles shoot up. In fact, says Noam Levey, a health care reporter for the deductibles have, on average, quadrupled over the last dozen years. As a result, even some people who have health insurance are having trouble affordinginto how the issue is affecting workers and their families.

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