Average Cost of Employer Health Coverage Tops $18,000 for Family in 2016
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Pace of cost increase slowed by accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, new survey shows.
The average cost of employer health coverage pushed above $18,000 for a family this year, though the pace of growth was slowed by the accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, according to a major survey.
Annual premium cost rose 3% to $18,142 for an employer family plan in 2016, from $17,545 last year, according to the annual poll of employers performed by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation along with the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association.
The share of the 2016 family-plan premium borne by employees was 30% of the total, compared with 29% last year. For an individual worker, the average annual cost of employer coverage was $6,435 in this year’s survey, and the increase from last year wasn’t statistically significant. The employee contribution was 18%.
Economists have long debated the reasons for the slow pace of growth in premiums, which has continued for several years. Some have argued that the limited rate of increase is primarily linked to aftereffects of the recession and continued economic uncertainty.
But the newest Kaiser survey highlights the effects of another shift: the continuing growth of plans that involve higher out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles. Kaiser foundation analysts suggested that the movement of workers into higher-deductible plans reduced the rate of premium growth by half a percentage point this year and another half-point last year.
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