Long before the economy started tearing at the seams, working family budgets were being frayed by out-of-control medical insurance costs that in Utah are up five times the increases in pay.

A report issued Thursday by the nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer health organization Families USA shows that from 2000 to 2007, health insurance premiums increased by 85 percent while median incomes during those locally robust economic times rose by only 17 percent.

The report notes that despite the good economic times and gains in higher take-home pay, employers were shifting to "insurance light" plans with pared-down benefits, higher co-payments, a trend of denied payments for medical procedures already pre-approved, higher deductibles and much stricter pre-existing condition exclusions.

The result, Families USA executive director Ron Pollack said Thursday, is a "triple whammy" of skyrocketing premium costs, a greater portion of compensation going for fringe benefit medical plans that pay for employers and the overall economy in the dumps.

"Bottom line," he added, "this is the definitive example of people paying a lot more and getting a lot less."

This new pile of health-care woes comes with a cherry on top: The cost of medical care is routinely driving people further into debt and into bankruptcy sometimes, with more than half of Utah bankruptcies due, at least in part, to unpaid medical bills.

Unlike the collapse on Wall Street, the health-care crisis could be seen coming for years, it's not something abstract, and fixing it isn't subject to stock-market-type mood swings, Pollack said, adding that when the dust settles in the financial markets and the presidential election, the health-care crisis will loom large again.

"This is beyond a state or regional problem," Pollack said. Efforts to induce reforms by states and individual insurance companies and hospitals are all well and good, he added, "but the scope and complexity of the problem is so big it defies any one state's or any single medical care company's effort to solve it."