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Workers Now Pay $7,471 on Average Annually for Family Health Coverage, Up 9% or $621 from 2025

Workers are paying on average $7,471 annually toward the premiums for employer-sponsored family health benefits in 2026, which is up 9%, or $621, from 2025. Including the employers’ share, total annual premiums for family coverage now average $28,303, up 5% from 2025. This benchmark annual survey also captures trends in deductibles, offer rates, and employer practices, and employers' experiences with GLP-1 and IVF coverage and understanding costs and utilization.

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What Are the Recent Trends in Employer-Based Health Coverage?

Employer-sponsored health insurance is the largest source of health coverage for people under 65. This analysis examines who among people under 65 have employer coverage and which workers are offered and eligible for coverage at their jobs, using the Annual Economic and Social (March) Supplements of the Current Population Survey.

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  • Media Availability on Senate Health Bill

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Kaiser Family Foundation held a media-only conference call Tuesday, June 27, with key experts to explain the Senate Republican health bill and to answer questions about its implications and the CBO’s scoring of the bill. During the call, Kaiser's experts  answered reporters' questions about the bill’s potential impact and implications, including how premiums, tax credits, and insurer participation in the ACA’s marketplaces could change; how the bill would phase out federal funding for the…

  • New County-Level Map Compares Premiums and Tax Credits Under Senate Health Bill and ACA

    News Release

    A new interactive map from the Kaiser Family Foundation compares county-level estimates of premiums that consumers would pay under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2020 with what they’d pay under the Senate’s discussion draft, Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), a replacement plan unveiled last Thursday. The maps include premium and tax credit estimates by county for current ACA marketplace enrollees at age 27, 40, or 60 with an annual income of $20,000, $30,000, $40,000,…

  • Pre-existing Conditions and Medical Underwriting in the Individual Insurance Market Prior to the ACA

    Issue Brief

    This brief reviews medical underwriting practices by private insurers in the individual health insurance market prior to 2014, and estimates how many American adults could face difficulty obtaining private individual market insurance because of a pre-existing condition if the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) were repealed or amended and such practices resumed.

  • Understanding Short-Term Limited Duration Health Insurance

    Issue Brief

    In late 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take steps to expand the availability of short-term health insurance policies. This brief provides background information on short-term policies and how they differ from ACA-compliant health plans. It also analyzes the short-term plans available through two major online brokers to assess how often they include coverage for mental health, substance abuse, prescription drugs and maternity care.

  • Why Low Growth in Health Costs Still Stings

    From Drew Altman

    This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on April 8, 2015. In my last Think Tank piece, I reported that just 3% of Americans felt health costs had been rising more slowly than usual, even though they have been growing at record low rates in recent years. The chart above shows why that might be the case: The gap is widening between growth in wages and what workers pay for health premiums and…

  • Premiums and Worker Contributions Among Workers Covered by Employer-Sponsored Coverage, 1999-2024

    Interactive

    This graphing tool allows users to explore trends in workplace-sponsored health insurance premiums and worker contributions over time for different categories of employers based on results from the annual Employer Health Benefits Survey. Breakouts are available by firm size, region and industry, as well as for firms with relatively few or many part-time workers, higher- or lower-wage workers, and older or younger workers.

  • Mental Health Parity at a Crossroads

    News Release

    With federal agencies preparing to update parity regulations and Congress considering reforms, our new report explains existing parity requirements, including who they apply to and how their enforced, and highlights key policy issues raised by regulators and advocates that could be addressed in the future. Those issues include: Simplifying parity standards to make it easier for apples-to-apples comparisons between behavior health and medical benefits needed to assess compliance. Taking a closer look at how insurers are…