Employers are already considering dropping expensive benefits, including GLP-1 coverage, while ACA premiums are headed for another large increase. So you’re not just looking at an insurance company problem. The costs are starting to change what employers are willing to cover.
And the progression is nasty:
2026: 20% median finalized ACA increase
2027: 15% median proposed increase
2027: employer healthcare costs +9.5%
2027: pharmacy costs +12%
2027: average employer healthcare cost >$19,000 per employee
Health Insurance Costs Are Soaring. Here’s Why
Next year’s hike in health insurance consumer costs is projected to be 9.5 percent. That is on top of this year’s 9 percent increase and 6 percent in 2025. From 2000 to today, when inflation rates were typically 3 percent or less (except during COVID), the growth rate for health insurance costs has been 6-to-9 percent. Because of compounding, this means in the last 25 years, consumer insurance costs have more than quadrupled.
This year, the average U.S. family of four will have a gross take-home pay of $83,730 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Healthcare costs for this same family will amount to $37,824, the bulk of it the price of ever-increasing insurance premiums.
The pattern is clear. The cost of health insurance keeps rising without regard to external factors and without providing any value to the consumer. When you pay more for something, you expect to get more. Why is this not true of health insurance? And will these mandatory, disproportionate, and progressively more unaffordable consumer costs continue to rise indefinitely? Apparently, the answer is yes.
In 2010, insurance costs were already unaffordable. After signing Obamacare into law, President Obama admitted that his namesake healthcare act would reform health insurance, rather than making health care affordable, despite its name, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). He further assured the public that Americans would save $2,500 on health insurance costs.
https://spectator.org/health-insurance-costs-are-soaring-heres-why/
Employers are preparing to drop weight loss drugs because healthcare costs keep rising
About 14% of employers have already dropped or plan to drop GLP-1 weight-loss drug coverage by 2027. Employer healthcare costs are expected to rise 9.2% in 2027, while pharmacy costs are projected to rise 12%.
Small businesses are increasingly giving up employer health insurance
The share of working-age Americans receiving health coverage through a job has fallen from 67% in 1998 to about 60%. Small businesses are increasingly dropping traditional coverage because premiums and out-of-pocket costs have become too expensive.