The average family premium for health insurance offered through an employer surpassed the $13,000 mark this year, and the cost of coverage continues to outpace increases in wages and inflation, according to a report released Tuesday. The average annual premium rose 5 percent in 2009, similar to the prior year’s increase and considered modest compared with double-digit increases earlier this decade. Over the past 10 years, premiums have risen 131 percent while wages have increased just 38 percent. In that time, inflation has gone up 28 percent. The report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, based on a survey of more than 3,100 U.S. firms earlier this year, comes at a time when the country is embroiled in a debate to overhaul its health care system by building upon the existing employer-sponsored model. The report found if premiums to cover families increase by 6.1 percent, the average growth over the past five years, they will exceed $24,000 a year by 2019 – a level many health experts consider unsustainable without efforts to rein in costs. ‘When health care costs continue to rise so much faster than overall inflation in a […]