Healthcare and Earnings KY

By Angela Hatton

Murray, KY – A consumer health report issued today (yesterday) shows health care premiums rose 2-point-8 times faster than Kentucky workers' earnings between 2000 and 2007. Non-profit health care advocacy group Families USA finds premiums shot up 47 and a half percent, while earnings increased around seventeen percent. The group's executive director Ron Pollack says healthcare costs are comprising more and more of Kentuckians' incomes.

And for many people like that who used to take health care coverage for granted, they no longer can take it for granted and they're at growing risks of joining the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.

Pollack says sixteen percent of Kentuckians don't have healthcare, not including the elderly. The report cites a study that claims medical costs contribute to at least half of bankruptcies today.