The Hyde Park household saw its health insurance premiums jump from $50 a month to $700 in seven years. Lance Gittins' $14-an-hour wage at a Logan manufacturing plant didn't jump at the same astronomical rate. So he quit to find a better-paying job.

"We just couldn't survive there anymore," recalled his wife, Mandy Gittins. "It was so expensive it was out of our reach."

A new report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows the Gittins' situation is common. Inflation-adjusted family premiums for work-based coverage have jumped an average of 22 percent in Utah from 2001 to 2005, while median income rose just 4.6 percent in roughly the same time frame.

Nationally, the picture was equally grim, with premiums jumping nearly 30 percent, while income rose one-tenth of that. Meantime, more employers are no longer offering health insurance.

The report, called "Squeezed: How Costs for Insuring Families are Outpacing Income," was released to coincide with the foundation-sponsored campaign called "Cover the Uninsured Week."

There are 47 million Americans - including more than 300,000 Utahns - who are uninsured.

The numbers don't surprise Suzette Green-Wright, who oversees health insurance for Utah's Insurance Department. She anticipates Utahns will decide not to pay for insurance even if their employer offers it, because it's too expensive - particularly as the costs of gas and food continue to rise.

The state is trying to determine how to fix this "crisis" through its health care reform task force, she said.

The Legislature created a task force that must, by November, develop a plan to reform the insurance system by cutting costs and increasing access. As part of that effort, Green-Wright said she is developing nine insurance plans that would offer various levels of benefits and prices, from "richest to leanest." The costs and levels of coverage have not been finalized.

"We'll [eventually] have more affordable plans," she said.

The foundation report also shows the percentage of private Utah employers who offer insurance dropped to 44 percent in 2005, one of the lowest rates in the country.

Paul Pilzer, founder of Zane Benefits - a Park City-based company that helps companies offer health insurance - said 2 million employees lose coverage each year in the United States. A growing trend is for employers to instead provide a set contribution to employees and let them get individual coverage through the private market, he noted. Utah lawmakers are exploring the concept through the task force.

Pilzer said such a move helps young, healthy people, who will pay one-third their current costs. It could be as cheap as $32 a month for a 21-year-old, he said. The older and sicker will pay "a lot," he said, but it's better than nothing.

"Half of Utah employers do not offer health insurance," he noted.

As premiums keep jumping, Salt Lake City lawyer Mary Corporon has thought about dropping insurance for her 15 employees and their families. But the idea is quickly dismissed. She said she feels a moral obligation to offer insurance, and she does it to stay competitive.

"We don't dare just stop offering it altogether," she said. "We don't want to lose our best employees."

That doesn't mean the costs are easy to cover. Last year, an insurance broker told Corporon she was "lucky" that premiums would jump 10 to 15 percent.

"It just struck me as absurd," she said. "I'm holding my breath and hoping the Legislature does come up with a good, real solution to the problem. If we're the first ones in the nation to fix this, the state won't have to spend any more money on economic development. . . They won't be able to stop businesses from migrating to Utah."

Lance and Mandy Gittins hope his decision to go back to school to become an electrician will pay off with a big enough salary that they can afford health insurance premiums. Recently, they've been able to get by on government-subsidized insurance.

"I'm hoping . . . somehow health insurance will be fixed," said Mandy Gittins.

hmay@sltrib.com