Press Release April 30, 1998	Contact: (202) 462-6262 Adrienne Mitchem, mitcad@consumer.org Kathleen McShea, mcshka@consumer.org Consumers Union Washington, D.C. Office

Consumers Union:
No Surprise Most Americans Expect Health Care Costs to Hurt

WASHINGTON &endash; Consumers Union said it is no surprise that the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) found Americans have little confidence that they could pay for their health care needs over the next ten years without incurring financial hardship.

"It is little wonder that American families feel terribly vulnerable in the face of the financial bite health care costs can take from their household budget," said Adrienne Mitchem, legislative counsel at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. "The research is overwhelming, and private studies concur with the government's own findings: the promise of affordable health care has not been kept. We hope policy-makers take notice of the accumulating evidence and act to fix the problem."

The findings in the new EBRI survey, released today, are in keeping with a Consumers Union study entitled Hidden from View &endash; the Growing Burden of Health Care Costs. That report found the burden of paying for health care is increasing for all Americans and falls disproportionately on the sick and the poor. Specifically, CU discovered one out of eight non-elderly families spend more than ten percent of their income on out-of-pocket medical bills and premiums they pay themselves. Moreover, a startling 31 million Americans who have health insurance coverage were under-insured, meaning that if hit with a catastrophic illness, they would risk having to spend more than ten percent of their income on medical expenses.

Another recent report by the General Accounting Office found that access to health insurance coverage in the individual market had not significantly increased since the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).