Washington ? The sluggish economy and rising health costs are combining to cost more people their health insurance, with 75 million uninsured at some point during 2001 or 2002, a study finds.

In tight times, businesses cut back coverage or charge their workers more for it. The result: the ranks of the uninsured now cut deeper into the middle class.

It’s a scenario that could spur Congress, stalled now on how to solve the problem, to approve some sort of assistance.

“I think that there’s more and more interest as the problem gets larger and larger,” said Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who is proposing a major overhaul of the health insurance system.

Breaux wants everyone — including workers, the elderly, the poor and veterans — to get insurance from a central system, with subsidies for those who need help paying premiums.

Others have more modest plans.

With little consensus about which approach is best, lawmakers have done nothing to alleviate the problem since 1997.

Now a coalition of diverse groups, including business, labor and several health organizations, has come together to push the issue in hundreds of events next week.

“We are moving towards a political tipping point will that will require real and meaningful action,” said Ron Pollack, president of Families USA, a liberal consumer group that is part of the “Cover the Uninsured Week.” Others on board: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the AFL-CIO, the American Medical Assn. and the Health Insurance Association of America.

Typically, the number of uninsured Americans is reported at around 41 million — those without health insurance for all of 2001. That was up from 2000 after dropping for two years.