Pamela A. MacLean
RedwoodAge.com

Stung by recessions and job losses, America's middle class has lost health insurance coverage at a faster pace than other groups, including low income workers, according to a nonpartisan health study.

Middle class wage earners who purchased health insurance through their job fell by more than 3 million people between 2000 and 2008.  Now just two-thirds, or 66 percent, of families earning between $45,000 and $85,000 annually have employer-sponsored insurance, down from 73 percent in 2000, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation review.

Employer-sponsored insurance has been the backbone of health coverage for most Americans.

While the declines in coverage were steeper for low income families, those numbers were typically offset by increases in coverage through government programs such as Medicaid. Typically, middle-class families don't qualify for these programs. That means the American middle-class became uninsured at a pace faster than both those with lower and higher incomes, the report states.

About 13 million middle-class Americans were uninsured in 2008, up about two million from 2000. The Census Bureau estimates that 46.3 million people are uninsured in this country, but that was before the economy took a hit in 2008.

Uninsured Boomers
Although health coverage tends to increase with age from its low in a worker's early 20s, a recent Gallup poll showed that during the boomer years roughly 20 percent of boomers had no health insurance.

"America's uninsured  crisis means that hard-working people with average incomes are being squeezed," said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, a doctor and president of the foundation. "The fallout from rising health insurance costs hits everyone. Employers must choose between either passing on costs to workers who cannot afford the increase and therefore drop coverage, or paying more for their employee's coverage at the cost of... jobs."

Nationwide the average cost an employee paid for a family insurance policy rose 81 percent between 2000 and 2008, even though the median household income fell 2.5 percent when adjusted for inflation.

The state-by-state cost review shows that family coverage premium increases for employer programs during the study period hit Indiana, at 74 percent; Minnesota and Rhode Island, 70 percent each; Oregon 69 percent the largest state, California at 65 percent.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. The cost of employee contributions rose even faster in some states. In Nevada the rise hit 171 percent; followed by Colorado at 133 percent, Massachusetts at 114 percent and Vermont at 107 percent.

At a lot of workplaces, employees found it even tougher to get insurance coverage. Nationally, the percentage of people whose employers did not offer insurance increased 12 percent in 2008. Employers also tightened eligibility. The study found 22 percent of workers were ineligible for  coverage even though their employers offered it.

"The facts show that everyone is suffering right now, regardless of income," said Lavizzo-Mourey.