Health insurance costs surpass $20,000 per year, hitting a record
"It's as much as buying a basic economy car," said
While employers pay most of the costs of coverage, according to the survey, workers' average contribution is now
The seemingly inexorable rise of costs has led to deep frustration with
"What we've been seeing is a slow, slow kind of drip-drip erosion in employer coverage," Altman said.
Employees' costs for health care are rising more quickly than wages or overall economy-wide prices, and the working poor have been particularly hard-hit. In firms where more than 35% of employees earn less than
The survey is based on responses from more than 2,000 randomly selected employers with at least three workers, including private firms and non-federal public employers.
Deductibles are rising even faster than premiums, meaning that patients are on the hook for more of their medical costs upfront. For a single person, the average deductible in 2019 was
While raising deductibles can moderate premiums, it also increases costs for people with an illness or who get hurt. "Cost-sharing is a tax on the sick," said
Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans must cover certain preventive services such as immunizations and annual wellness visits without patient cost-sharing. But patients still have to pay out-of-pocket for other essential care, such as medication for chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, until they meet their deductibles.
Many Americans aren't prepared for the risks that deductibles transfer to patients. Almost 40% of adults can't pay an unexpected
That's a problem, Fendrick said. "My patient should not have to have a bake sale to afford her insulin," he said.
After years of pushing health-care costs onto workers, some employers are pressing pause.
"We said we're not going to raise them. We're going to absorb the cost because we need to make certain people know that their benefits structure is real important," Bastian said. He said the company's health-care costs are growing by double-digits. The
Some large employers have reversed course on asking workers to take on more costs, according to a separate survey from the
Employers have to balance their desire to control costs with their need to attract and keep workers, said Kaiser's Altman. That leaves them less inclined to make aggressive moves to tackle underlying medical costs, such as by cutting high-cost hospitals out of their networks. In recent years employers' health-care costs have remained steady as a share of their total compensation expenses.
"There's a lot of gnashing of teeth," Altman said, "but if you look at what they do, not what they say, it's reasonably vanilla."
(With assistance from
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