The Obama administration and organized labor ratcheted up their campaign for health care reform yesterday with two new studies filled with statistics and stories of Americans struggling to pay for medical treatment.

The stories are familiar to most Americans.

They are stories of people who can't afford basic health care or an extra visit to the doctor when they are sick because the co-pays are too high.

And they are stories of those who lose jobs and insurance and no longer can afford to treat chronic illness.

Stories of people being bankrupted by their health care even when they have insurance.

In its "2009 Health Care for America Survey" released yesterday, the AFL-CIO found not just the uninsured struggling to pay for health care.

Forty-three percent of people who reported having insurance said they were not able to obtain the health care they need because of the cost.

Also yesterday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a report, "Hidden Costs of Health Care: Why Americans Are Paying More But Getting Less," in which the government found that a person with employer-based coverage paid an average of $1,522 for health care in 2006, not including premiums.

The federal report, and others on the state of health care, can be found at www.healthreform.gov/reports/index.html.

The federal report also found the average premium for a family plan purchased through an employer was $12,680, which was almost as much as the average earnings for a full-time minimum wage job.

The union survey noted 80 percent of people with insurance reported their health care costs increased in the last year.

Uninsured Americans are in worse shape, with 96 percent of the respondents in the union survey reporting they cannot get the care they need at an affordable cost.

Arlene Holt Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, said as Congress works on health care legislation, "Working women and men's voices must be part of the mix."

Ms. Baker said before the AFL-CIO put up the survey on its Web site, the union already knew families were having trouble keeping up with health care costs.

"We didn't know that those with insurance are just as likely to be foundering as those without," she said.

"Even the lucky ones who have insurance still report being hit by huge bills."

The online poll, to which 23,460 people responded, was taken from April 1 to May 31. In addition, 6,000 people posted their stories online.

Ms. Baker said many respondents wrote about making medical decisions contrary to their doctor's advice because of the cost.

In the survey, 52 percent of respondents -- both those with and without insurance -- said they couldn't get the care they need at an affordable price, and 61 percent of those with coverage were dissatisfied with the coverage they have.

In the Health and Human Services report, the department found 37 percent of low-income families and 22 percent of middle-income families spending more than 10 percent of their income on health care.

That figure is 8 percent for high-income families.

Health and Human Services also detailed that in 2004, the average deductible for a family plan was $2,081.

That went up by nearly a third to $2,753 in 2007.

"It doesn't matter if you have insurance or not: when Americans go to the hospital or the doctor's office, they are paying more and getting less," Ms. Sebelius said in a news release.

"Every year, co-pays, deductibles and other expenses are taking a bigger bite out of the family budget, and the American people are demanding reform."