According to recent figures, Federal employees in the United States could be facing an eight per cent increase in the cost of their health insurance premiums next year, according to research from The Office of Personnel Management.

Most workers will face a greater effect on the cost of their medical insurance premiums in 2009, with some likely to experience a 13 per cent rise in the cost of their insurance policies.

The OPM associate director for strategic human resources, Nancy Kichak, said: "We worked very hard to contain premium costs, and we were more successful with some health plans than with others."

The health insurance situation in the Unites States is quite different from that of the United Kingdom’s, where in the United States more employers offer their employees health insurance policies. However there is no counterpart to the National Health Services (NHS), so people without health insurance policies can face high medical bills should they need to go to hospital.