Thought inflation was bad? Health insurance premiums are rising even faster

Kirk Vartan pays more than $2,000 a month for a high-deductible health insurance plan from Blue Shield on Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace. He could have selected a cheaper plan from a different provider, but he wanted one that includes his wife’s doctor.

“It’s for the two of us, and we’re not sick,” said Vartan, general manager at A Slice of New York pizza shops in the Bay Area cities of San Jose and Sunnyvale. “It’s ridiculous.”

Vartan, who is in his late 50s, is one of millions of Californians struggling to keep up with health insurance premiums ballooning faster than inflation.

Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled over the last 15 years, from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, a KFF Health News analysis of federal data shows. That’s more than twice the rate of inflation. Also, employees have had to absorb a growing share of the cost.

The spike is not confined to California. Average premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage grew as fast nationwide as they did in California from 2008 through 2023, federal data shows. Premiums continued to grow rapidly in 2024, according to KFF.

Small-business groups warn that, for workers whose employers don’t provide coverage, the problem could get worse if Congress does not extend enhanced federal subsidies that make health insurance more affordable on individual markets such as Covered California, the public marketplace that insures more than 1.9 million Californians.

Premiums on Covered California have grown about 25% since 2022, roughly double the pace of inflation. But the exchange helps nearly 90% of enrollees mitigate high costs by offering state and federal subsidies based on income, with many families paying little or nothing.

Rising premiums also have hit government workers — and taxpayers. Premiums at CalPERS, which provides insurance to more than 1.5 million of California’s active and retired public employees and family members, have risen about 31% since 2022. Public employers pay part of the cost of premiums as negotiated with labor unions; workers pay the rest.

“Insurance premiums have been going up faster than wages over the last 20 years,” said Miranda Dietz, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center who focuses on health insurance. “Especially in the last couple of years, those premium increases have been pretty dramatic.”

Dietz said rising hospital prices are largely to blame. Consumer costs for hospitals and nursing homes rose about 88% from 2009 through 2024, roughly double the overall inflation rate, according to data from the Department of Labor. The rising cost of administering America’s massive health care system has also pushed premiums higher, she said.

Insurance companies remain highly profitable, but their gross margins — the amount by which premium income exceeds claims costs — were fairly steady during the last few years, KFF research shows. Under federal rules, insurers must spend a minimum percentage of premiums on medical care.

Rising insurance costs are cutting deeper into family incomes and squeezing small businesses.

The average annual cost of family health insurance offered by private sector companies was about $24,000, or roughly $2,000 a month, in California during 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Employers paid, on average, about two-thirds of the bill, with workers paying the remaining third, about $650 a month. Workers’ share of premiums has grown faster in California than in the rest of the nation.

Many small-business workers whose employers don’t offer health care turn to Covered California. During the last three decades, the percentage of businesses nationwide with 10 to 24 workers offering health insurance fell from 65% to 52%, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Coverage fell from 34% to 23% among businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

“When an employee of a small business isn’t able to access health insurance with their employer, they’re more likely to leave that employer,” said Bianca Blomquist, California director for Small Business Majority, an advocacy group representing more than 85,000 small businesses across America.

Kirk Vartan said his pizza shop employs about 25 people and operates as a worker cooperative — a business owned by its workers. The small business lacks negotiating power to demand discounts from insurance companies to cover its workers. The best the shop could do, he said, were expensive plans that would make it hard for the cooperative to operate. And those plans would not offer as much coverage as workers could find for themselves through Covered California.

“It was a lose-lose all the way around,” he said.

Mark Seelig, a spokesperson for Blue Shield of California, said rising costs for hospital stays, doctor visits, and prescription drugs put upward pressure on premiums. Blue Shield has created a new initiative that he said is designed to lower drug prices and pass on savings to consumers.

Even at California companies offering insurance, the percentage of employees enrolled in plans with a deductible has roughly doubled in 20 years, rising to 77%, federal data shows. Deductibles are the amount a worker must pay for most types of care before their insurance company starts paying part of the bill. The average annual deductible for an employer-provided family health insurance plan was about $3,200 in 2023.

During the last two decades, the cost of health insurance premiums and deductibles in California rose from about 4% of median household income to about 12%, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, which conducts research on labor and employment issues.

As a result, the center found, many Californians are choosing to delay or forgo health care, including some preventive care.

California is trying to lower health care costs by setting statewide spending growth caps, which state officials hope will curb premium increases. The state recently established the Office of Health Care Affordability, which set a five-year target for annual spending growth at 3.5%, dropping to 3% by 2029. Failure to hit targets could result in hefty fines for health care organizations, though that likely wouldn’t happen until 2030 or later.

Other states that imposed similar caps saw health care costs rise more slowly than states that did not, Dietz said.

“Does that mean that health care becomes affordable for people?” she asked. “No. It means it doesn’t get worse as quickly.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.