New Report: Americans with Employer Health Coverage Face Growing Cost Burdens
U.S. workers and their families, especially those living in the South, are spending a bigger share of their income on health care, a new Commonwealth Fund study finds.
Average employee premium contributions for single and family plans consumed nearly 7 percent of U.S. median income in 2017, up from 5 percent in 2008. In Louisiana, premium contributions represented 10.2 percent of median income. For Americans whose incomes fall in the midrange of the income distribution, total spending on employer plan premiums and potential out-of-pocket costs to meet deductibles amounted to 11.7 percent of income last year, up from 7.8 percent a decade earlier.
"The cost of employer health insurance premiums and deductibles continues to outpace growth in workers' wages," notes the Commonwealth Fund’s Sara Collins, the lead author of the study. Collins says that fixing the Affordable Care Act’s family coverage glitch, requiring employers to exclude some services from the deductible, and increasing the required minimum value of employer plans would help reduce health care burdens on workers and their families.
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