Make room in your budget for bruising healthcare premium hikes.
Whether you’re on an employer-based plan or receive coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, the monthly cost for having health insurance is on track to rise in a big way in 2026.
Healthcare costs are plenty high to begin with. This year, family premiums for employer-sponsored health plans hit an annual average of nearly $27,000, up 6% from a year earlier, with workers paying an average of $6,850 toward that total, according to a survey from the health policy nonprofit KFF. (The majority of Americans receive health coverage through their employers.)
Now, employers say they’re expecting the total health benefit cost per worker to increase by the largest amount in 15 years, according to Mercer, while some Americans on marketplace plans are receiving notices that their costs will spike massively if enhanced tax credits ultimately expire.
Healthcare costs are marching higher for a multitude of reasons, Sara Collins, a senior scholar at the Commonwealth Fund, told Yahoo Finance.
Growth in medical costs, driven by price changes for services, prescription drugs, and higher utilization of healthcare, typically leads insurers to set premiums higher. And employers have reported higher costs from bigger catastrophic claims, more spending on chronic illnesses, and workers using weight-loss drugs.
When it comes to higher premiums, “some employers may just absorb all of that cost and just continue to ask employees to continue to contribute the same amount,” Collins said. “But it is likely that people will see, if not higher premiums, some changes in their cost-sharing in particular — maybe higher copays for physician visits and prescription drugs.”
Meanwhile, for next year, the median premium increase proposed by insurers for Affordable Care Act-regulated plans is 18%, the largest one-year proposed hike since 2018.
Over 24 million Americans received their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace this year, and open enrollment for next year starts Nov. 1. A major driver behind the current government shutdown — the second-longest in US history — is that Biden-era enhanced premium subsidies for those plans are set to expire, meaning millions of Americans may get less help to cope with higher costs next year.
Learn more: Medicare open enrollment: How to adjust your coverage
“Over the course of October, consumers are being informed of these higher net premiums because they’re going to be facing higher out-of-pocket net expenses without the enhanced subsidies,” said Fredric Blavin, a senior fellow in the Health Policy Division at the Urban Institute. “This will affect consumers right now in terms of their winter shopping for plans or reenrollment.”
