Family Health Insurance Plans Now Cost Over $28,000 a Year

STAT
STAT
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Good Thursday evening! Calley Means, a key figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement and top adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resigned from the Trump administration today. The resignation comes after Means reportedly began to feel "stymied" in his efforts to deliver on the MAHA agenda on food policy and related issues, including pesticide use. The resignation signals "a further erosion of a coalition that helped propel President Trump to power a second time," The New York Times reports.

Here's what else is happening with 12 days to go until the midterm elections.

Family Health Insurance Plans Now Cost Over $28,000 a Year

The cost of employer-based health insurance for a family rose 5% in 2026, reaching $28,303 on average, according to a new analysis by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization.

Employers typically cover most of the cost of health insurance, but the employee share has been rising, too. Employees paid $7,471 a year on average for family coverage in 2026, a 9% increase from the year before. Over the last five years, the cost of the employee share for family coverage has risen 26%.

Annual deductibles - the amount you must pay before insurance kicks in - are rising, too. The average deductible for employees in all types of plans is $1,955 in 2026. Some employees at smaller firms have much higher deductibles, upwards of $3,000.

About 157 million Americans rely on employer-based health insurance, but the cost of coverage varies by company size. Workers at firms with 10 to 199 employees are paying $9,687 per year for family coverage on average this year, while those at firms with 1,000 to 4,999 employees are paying $6,186.

Regardless of size, the cost of employer-based health insurance has risen faster than inflation and faster than workers' earnings for the past three years.

The largest driver of rising premiums is the cost of treating patients at hospitals, but there are other factors in play as well. Insurers are still paying more for the GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and employers say they are looking for ways to manage the cost of specialty drugs next year.

Affordability challenges: Matthew Rae, associate director of KFF's Program on the Health Care Marketplace, said rising costs are weighing on many workers. "There are real affordability challenges for the millions of Americans who get coverage this way," he said, per Bloomberg.

Healthcare costs haven't taken center stage in the same way that fuel prices have during the runup to the midterms, but Drew Altman, president and chief executive of KFF, says those concerns are significant nevertheless. "People tell us in polls that their health care costs are their top cost-of-living concern, tied with gas prices," Altman told The New York Times. "The fact that workers' share of premiums went up almost three times faster than inflation in 2026 helps explain why."

Anthony Wright, the executive director of Families USA, a liberal advocacy group focused on healthcare, said the KFF report shows why consumers are so worried - and angry - about healthcare costs. "They are mad at hospitals and drug companies and insurers for charging so much," Wright told the Times. "They are furious at Congress for not reining them in."

Quote of the Day

"It's really encouraging for rates that Treasuries are behaving like a safe-haven asset."

− Michael Chang, interest-rate derivatives strategist at Citigroup, quoted in a Bloomberg article detailing a rally in Treasuries, which had their best day in more than a year "as a deepening rout in AI-related shares and market turmoil in France combined to make US government debt the investment of choice for anxious traders."

As investors seek the safe haven of U.S. Treasuries, the yield on the benchmark 10-year note dropped below 5%, a key level, for the first time since September 23.

"For the first time in a while, Treasurys are enjoying haven status," Larry Holzenthaler, senior portfolio manager for fixed income at Catalyst Funds, told CNBC. "You have weakness in tech, an escalation of risk in the Middle East and higher oil. On a relative basis Treasurys start to look like the safe place to hide again in the short term."

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