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More than one in four American workers under 65 will be uninsured in 2013, equaling nearly 56 million people, driven by workers' increasing inability to afford health insurance, according to new projections published by HealthAffairs.org.

Authors Todd Gilmer and Richard Kronick of the University of California, San Diego, base their estimates of the uninsured on federal projections of health spending, personal income and other population characteristics. Their work was supported by the California HealthCare Foundation.

Because growth in per capita health spending is expected to outpace median personal income by 2.4 percentage points a year, health care coverage will continue to decline, because more Americans will find it unaffordable, their research found. While factors such as changes in employment patterns and demographic shifts have some mild effects on health care coverage, cost has the biggest effect.

For each one percent increase in health spending relative to personal income, the number of uninsured people increases by 246,000, the researchers say. As a result, according to their projections, 11 million more people will lack coverage in 2013 than in 2003.

Based on estimates from the Institute of Medicine, this is expected to lead to an increase of 4,500 deaths annually and an increased annual loss of human capital of $16-$32 billion.

"Regardless of whether health care benefits are being paid out of employer's or employee's pocket, and without regard to the amount of premium contribution that employees are required to make, there is a remarkably tight relationship between affordability and coverage rates," the authors say.

"It is unlikely that we will be able to solve the problem of the uninsured without some form of universal health insurance requiring contributions from some combination of employers, employees, and taxpayers. It is also unlikely that either our current system of employer-sponsored coverage or an alternative system of universal coverage will be sustainable without more effective efforts at cost containment."

The complete text of the repport is available online. Health Affairs, published by Project HOPE, is a bimonthly multidisciplinary journal devoted to publishing the leading edge in health policy thought and research.

Referred from: (http://www.consumeraffairs.com)