Families Now Pay Nearly $7,500 a Year for Job-Based Health Insurance, KFF Finds
The premium bill keeps climbing
Workers with family coverage through their jobs now pay an average of $7,471 a year toward their health insurance premiums, up 9% from last year, per KFF.
The figure comes from KFF's 2026 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released October 22 and covered by Business Insider.
The total cost of a family plan, counting what employers pay, reached $28,303, up 5% from 2025.
Workers are absorbing a bigger slice of that bill. Employees now cover about 27% of the family premium on average, while employers pick up the rest.
Premiums are outrunning paychecks
The 9% jump in worker contributions outpaced both wage growth of 3.7% and inflation of 2.7% over the same period, per KFF.
The shift is deliberate at many companies. Among firms with 200 or more workers, 44% increased the share of premiums that workers pay this year, and 21% raised deductibles or other cost sharing, per KFF.
Workers at smaller firms pay the most. Employees at firms with 10 to 199 workers contributed an average of $9,687 a year toward family coverage, compared with $6,840 at larger companies.
Premiums are only part of the bill. The average deductible for workers with single coverage reached $1,955 in 2026, per KFF, and 38% of those workers face deductibles of at least $2,000.
Households are already struggling to pay for care
Separate polling shows the strain reaching the doctor's office. About 28% of American adults said they had trouble paying for medical care for themselves or their family in the past year, per Pew Research Center.
Medical care was the hardest basic necessity to afford in the Pew survey, ahead of transportation and housing.
In total, 44% of adults reported difficulty affording at least one basic necessity in the past year, and 53% said they do not have an emergency fund covering three months of expenses, per Pew.
"People tell us in polls that their health care costs are their top cost-of-living concern, tied with gas prices," KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said, per The Fiscal Times.
Altman added that the 9% increase in what workers pay for family coverage adds to the reasons voters are concerned about health care costs.
What is driving the increase
Hospital care remains the largest driver of rising premiums, and insurers are also paying more for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, per The Fiscal Times.
Costs outside the workplace are climbing too. The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits at the end of 2025 is expected to raise premium payments for subsidized marketplace enrollees by an average of 114%, or about $1,016 a year, per KFF estimates.
Nearly 157 million Americans under age 65 rely on employer-sponsored coverage, per KFF, so the increases land in open enrollment decisions happening now for 2027 plans.
Stocks and options to watch
Healthcare names sit on both sides of the premium surge. Rising premiums support revenue at insurers such as UNH, ELV, CI and HUM, while higher medical costs pressure their margins.
Pharmacy and benefits exposure runs through CVS, and GLP-1 demand keeps LLY in focus as employers weigh specialty drug spending for 2027.
Traders can track unusual options activity and flow in these names on Unusual Whales as open enrollment headlines build into year-end.
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