Texas insurance premiums climb 10 times faster than wages

Insurance rates for Texas families increased 40 percent from 2001 to 2005, according to a recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. That rate of increase puts Texas in third place nationally behind Oklahoma and Idaho. Median earnings for family health policyholders in Texas climbed only 3.5 percent during those years.

“This study makes plain what every working parent knows—that providing insurance coverage takes a bigger bite from the family budget every year,” said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of RWJF, in a statement released with the study.

The Texas Department of Insurance told the Austin American-Statesman that premiums in Texas doubled between 1997 and 2004, but the department did not have data to report what insurance company profits were during those years.

Your own TAFP recently felt the squeeze of a huge premium increase. You can read all the sordid details in the cover story for the most recent issue of TEXAS FAMILY PHYSICIAN, now available online, but here’s the gist. TAFP’s insurance carrier announced that the renewal rate for 2008 would be 23.5 percent higher than in 2007, an amount that would have capped a 74.8-percent hike since 2003.

When TAFP requested information from the insurer on how much of the premiums collected were spent on medical care, Academy staff and leaders were shocked to find that only 74 percent had been spent on medical care, leaving the rest for “administrative costs” and profit.

In an opinion column published in a few of the state’s major daily newspapers, TAFP President Linda Siy, M.D., wrote: “Something is seriously wrong with our health care system. In a time of record health insurance profits and obscene executive compensation, how are these health insurance costs justified?”

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If you missed it in 2006, Families USA published a very similar report to the new RWJF report, called “Premiums Versus Paychecks.”