Every September, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) publish a survey of employer sponsored health benefits. (Click here.) So this year’s just came out today. And every year, there’s the “money chart” showing the national trend on health insurance premium increases versus workers’ earning and overall inflation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is always worth at least a million. Here is this year’s addition.

So nationally, premium inflation is down to levels last seen around 1999/2000, still significantly higher than workers’ earning increases and general inflation, and nowhere near the lowpoints it reached in the mid-1990s. Also, it occurs to us that the low premium inflation periods always correspond to relatively better economic times, and the peaks in health premium inflation always (going back to the mid-1970s) coincide with economic downturns.

So if we are on the cusp of another economic downturn, what does that mean? Relatively speaking, these are the good ‘ole days in comparison with what is ahead. Hope not. Hard to read this chart any other way.

Here’s another reaction, more locally based. According to Martha Bebinger’s WBUR Blog, premium increases by the major Massachusetts plans will be up 6-13 percent over the coming year. Here’s a question — why are MA premiums increasing at so much a higher rate than the rest of the nation? We know there are logical and clear reasons why our base premiums are higher than the rest of the nation’s.

The question here is: why is our rate of growth in premium inflation so high as well relative to the rest of the country?

Any answers?