The average total cost of employer-provided health coverage passed $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, a landmark that will likely resonate politically as health care has become an early focus of the presidential campaign.
Annual premiums rose 5% to hit $20,576 for an employer-provided family plan in 2019, according to the yearly poll of employers by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, The Wall Street Journal reports. On average, employers bore 71% of that cost, while employees paid the rest.
Employees’ costs rose at a faster clip—the average annual amount that workers paid toward premiums for the family plans grew 8%, to $6,015 this year. The average deductible for single coverage, which employees pay out of their pockets before insurance kicks in, went up as well, to $1,655, though that didn’t factor in plans with no deductible.
For an individual employer plan, the average total premium cost was $7,188 in the 2019 survey, or 4% higher than last year.
The rate of growth in coverage costs, including those borne by employees, continued to outstrip rises in inflation and wages, according to the Kaiser foundation, squeezing workers despite a low unemployment rate that might encourage companies to sweeten their benefits.
The Kaiser survey was conducted between January and July of this year and included 2,012 randomly selected employers that responded to the full telephone survey. Read the full story.
