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September 23, 2024

Study: 13% of CT households can’t afford healthcare costs

Contributed
By David Krechevsky

An updated state study found that 13% of working-age households overall in Connecticut could not afford their healthcare costs in 2022.

The state Office of Health Strategy (OHS) also said Monday that, according to the recently updated Connecticut Health Affordability Index (CHAI), over a quarter of working-age households (27.1%) in Connecticut couldn’t afford basic necessities, including not just health care but housing, food, child care and transportation. 

The study was first developed in 2019 by the University of Washington (UW) School of Social Work’s Center for Women’s Welfare on behalf of OHS, the Office of the State Comptroller and the Connecticut Health Foundation. The index assesses the effect of healthcare costs on families in the state.

The index considers healthcare costs — including insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other expenses — unaffordable if they exceed 7% to 11% of a household’s income, depending on the size of the household.  A family with two adults and two children is expected to spend no more than 9.1% of their income on health care, according to the study.

The 2022 data is the latest available. 

Lisa Manzer, director of the Center for Women’s Welfare at UW, noted that the percentage of working-age households unable to afford health care decreased between 2019 and 2022, but primarily because costs decreased in “the most common individual marketplace plans between 2019 and 2022,” and because the premium tax credit was expanded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021. 

Plan costs rose in 2023 and 2024, and the premium tax credit expires next year, Manzer said.

“Health care was still unaffordable for one in five of these families in 2022 and they face greater challenges ahead,” she said. 

Families with different types of health insurance had different experiences, the study found. For example, 13.8% of households with insurance through their job could not afford basic needs, compared to 27.8% of households who bought insurance on the individual market and nearly 70% of households that were eligible for Medicaid.

Households with employer-sponsored health plans saw their average premiums increase by over 12% between 2019 and 2022, the study found.  While the percentage of these households unable to afford healthcare costs dipped slightly from 2019 (16%) to 2022 (15%) — these households experienced greater challenges in meeting their basic needs.  The percentage of households with employer-sponsored health plans who could not afford basic needs grew from 10% to 14%, the study found.

"We take great pride in the exceptional quality of life that Connecticut offers," State Comptroller Sean Scanlon said. "But we cannot truly fulfill our state's potential if we allow anyone to be left behind, especially when it comes to accessing healthcare and essential services.”

An executive summary of the study can be found here.

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