Out-of-pocket expenses

Even as the number of people lacking health insurance dropped slightly in Connecticut last year, the state registered the highest percentage since 1999 of residents buying coverage on their own dime.

The new data arrived from the U.S. Census Bureau as federal subsidies expired that had extended eligibility and benefits for COBRA insurance, potentially forcing some families with no steady paycheck to buy a policy in the individual market, go onto state programs for low-income insurance or go without coverage.

The subsidies, enacted in the wake of the recession, covered 65 percent of the cost of a family staying on the health insurance program of the company where an earner last worked. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated the subsidies cut the average household”™s insurance bill to just under $400 from the nearly $1,150 families would otherwise have to pay on average nationally. Still, the Employee Benefits Research Institute said there was no measurable difference in COBRA enrollment after the subsidies kicked in, though previous studies by Ceridian and Hewitt Associates found otherwise.

October marks the beginning of the open-enrollment period for many businesses, during which employees renew or change their health care plans ”“ with many of those plans often having been altered or introduced for the first time as companies seek to balance reigning in health care inflation with maintaining a competitive benefits package for their workers.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners stated that with the economy weighing heavily on the wallets of consumers, and health care reform still confusing to many, Americans have more to think about than ever as they make health insurance open-enrollment decisions this fall.

Increasingly in 2010, residents got health insurance on their own. Last year, an estimated 431,000 Connecticut residents ”“

12.3 percent ”“ bought insurance directly from a carrier, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared to 11.1 percent in 2009.

Another 384,000 Connecticut residents on average lacked health insurance altogether in 2010, according to new estimates by the Census Bureau, an 11 percent rate that placed the state ninth nationally for insurance coverage.

The state had 3,000 fewer people lacking insurance from the year before, a decline the Census Bureau indicated was not statistically significant but which nevertheless headed in the opposite direction of the rest of the nation. The number of people lacking health insurance nationwide climbed by 900,000 people, with the study covering the first calendar year following the recession. The bureau calculated a national uninsured rate of 16.3 percent, and the percentage of people on private health plans fell a half percentage point to 64 percent.

Massachusetts, which enacted universal health insurance in 2008, has yet to actually achieve that goal but nonetheless led the nation with just 5 percent of its residents not on a plan in 2010.

Vermont and Maine were the only other Northeast states to achieve single-digits for uninsured residents. New York ranked 28^th nationally with a 14.5 percent rate, while New Jersey was two slots back at 15 percent, the worst performance of any Northeast state.

Texas trailed the nation with fully 25 percent of its residents lacking health insurance.