Nearly 200,000 expected to lose health insurance in Michigan

A new report (PDF) put out by Families USA, a non-profit and non-partisan organization that calls itself “the voice for health care consumers,” predicts that more than 160,000 Michigan residents will lose their health insurance by the end of 2010.

The report offers a state-by-state look at the data on Americans losing their health insurance due to unemployment or to their employers eliminating health insurance due to high cost between January, 2008 and December, 2010. For Michigan, their figures show a rate of 1,040 people losing their health insurance each week, approximately 4,500 per month, for a total of 162,100 people newly without health coverage by the end of next year.

The report notes that the costs of health insurance in this country have risen at several times the rate of inflation: “Over the last decade, health insurance premiums have risen at rates that far outpace inflation. Between 1999 and 2008, the average annual family premium more than doubled, soaring from $5,791 to $12,680, an increase of 119 percent.4 During the same time period, the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation, rose by only 29.2 percent.”

The report also notes that in addition to health insurance lost due to job loss, even those who have kept their jobs may find themselves without health insurance. From 2000 to 2008, the number of employers offering health coverage fell 6% and the overwhelming reason cited by those companies was the high cost of maintaining the coverage.

The report concludes that “Congress should act expeditiously to pass health reform legislation. As this report suggests, the longer Congress waits to enact meaningful health reform, the more American families will lose coverage in each and every state.”