Fewer California workers were offered health insurance through their company last year—and the ones that were getting coverage had to pay significantly more.

An annual survey by the California HealthCare Foundation finds premiums for employer health insurance plans have risen 153.5 percent since 2002, a rate that’s more than five times the increase in California’s inflation rate. And in just the last two years, the proportion of California employers offering coverage fell to 63 percent from 73 percent. 

That, along with increased cost sharing for employees, is in part a response to a steady rise in costs during these dismal economic times. Other companies (22 percent) have opted to make employees pay more of the share of the higher premiums.

And 2012 will likely be worse, the survey suggests. More than a third of California companies (36 percent) said they were either “very” or “somewhat” likely to raise the amount that their staff paid in premiums in 2012.

The report findings are based on a random sample of 770 interviews with employee benefit managers in private firms in California from July to October 2011.