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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2006;296:924.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The percentage of workers enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans that require them to pay a share of their hospital bills has substantially increased, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/papers/st127/stat127.pdf). The agency's survey of private-sector employers found that the percentage of such workers increased from 33.8% in 1999 to 54.7% in 2003.

The survey also revealed that the percentage of enrolled workers whose plans did not require hospital copayments fell by nearly one third during this time—from 66.3% to 45.3%. The percentage whose plans required copayments ranging from $150 to $400 for hospital care doubled from 10.5% to 21%, as did the percentage of enrolled workers required to pay more than $400 for such care (from 6.4% to 13.1%).

There were also shifts in the amounts of copays charged when visiting physicians. The percentage of workers who had to pay more than . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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