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Soaring deductibles and medical bills are pushing millions of American families to the breaking point, fueling an affordability crisis that is pulling in middle-class households with health insurance as well as the poor and uninsured. In the last 12 years, annual deductibles in job-based health plans have nearly quadrupled and now average more than $1,300. Yet Americans’ savings are not keeping pace, data show. And more than four in 10 workers enrolled in a high-deductible plan report they don’t have enough savings to cover the deductible. (Levey, 5/2)

Clarisa Corber hopes someday to get medication for depression and acne. Her husband, Zack, an apprentice pipefitter and former high school football player, needs a doctor to look at his knees, which swell when he climbs too many stairs. The Corbers wish they could put something in a college fund for their three children. Both parents, who are 33, dream of moving the family out of the cramped, 1,000-square-foot house they rent in a crime-plagued Topeka neighborhood known as the Dirty South. (Levey, 5/2)

Workers with a steady paycheck already know that wages have been stubbornly slow to rise. Meanwhile, those who get health insurance through a job have seen their deductibles shoot up. In fact, says Noam Levey, a health care reporter for the Los Angeles Times, deductibles have, on average, quadrupled over the last dozen years. As a result, even some people who have health insurance are having trouble affording medical care. We talked with Levey about his latest reporting into how the issue is affecting workers and their families. (Martin, 5/3)