Average Monthly Health Insurance Premiums

Healthcare Costs More Than Workers' Wages: Study

Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage rose 9 per cent in 2011 to $15,073. Out of that, on average, workers pay $4,129 and employers pay $10,944 toward those annual premiums.   

The study showed that premiums increased 2.1 per cent faster than workers' wages and 3.2 per cent more than the general inflation.  Since 2001, family premiums have increased 113 per cent, compared with 34 per cent for workers' wages and 27 per cent for inflation.

"This year's nine percent increase in premiums is especially painful for workers and employers struggling through a weak recovery," Kaiser President and CEO, Drew Altman, Ph.D. said.

In particular, the survey estimates that employers added 2.3 million young adults to their parents' family health insurance policies as a result of the health reform provision that allows young adults up to age 26 without employer coverage on their own to be covered as dependents on their parents' plan.  Young adults historically are more likely to be uninsured than any other age group.

"The law is helping millions of young adults to obtain health coverage.  In the past, many of these young adults would have lost coverage when they left home or graduated college," said study lead author, Gary Claxton, a Kaiser vice president and co-executive director of the Kaiser Initiative on Health Reform and Private Insurance. 

The study also found that 31 per cent of covered workers are in high-deductible health plans, facing deductibles for single coverage of at least $1,000, including 12 per cent facing deductibles of at least $2,000. 

Covered workers in smaller firms are more likely to face such high deductibles, with half of the workers in smaller firms facing deductibles of at least $1,000, including 28 per cent facing deductibles of $2,000 or more, according to the study.

The study showed that premiums for worker-only health coverage increased 8 per cent in 2011 to $5,429, while workers on average pay $921 toward this coverage.

Small Business Insurance

A 2006 survey, released by the health insurance trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), offers a snapshot look at small group health insurance plans throughout Texas and nationwide. The survey has once again stirred up debates over whether health insurance is affordable enough to allow small businesses to cover their workers, or if sweeping changes are needed.

The survey showed that small businesses — those companies with 50 employees or fewer — actually paid a slightly lower health-plan premium than that reflected in a previous survey of mostly larger companies.

“The take-home message is that small businesses have affordable options,” said AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni. “This is the only survey of its type on very, very, small businesses,” she said. “The ‘less coverage’ hypothesis for small businesses is not what the data show.”

The AHIP survey specifically reports that more than 650,000 small companies showed they paid an average monthly premium of $311 for individual members, and $814 for a family (“family” generally meaning a family of four).

AHIP officials also noted that the monthly premium for individual members is down from the $335 average premium revealed in an earlier survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which focused on firms with three or more workers. The premium decrease, AHIP officials said, was due to cost sharing, which tends to be more significant in small-business health plans, compared with those of large firms.

The AHIP survey — which divided the small companies into those with 10 or fewer workers, 11 to 25 employees and 26 to 50 workers — also revealed that premiums dropped slightly as company size increased.

But the survey’s portrait of a robust small- business insurance market is misleading. The health insurance industry could do even better by its mom-and-pop customers if legal barriers weren’t standing in the way, Ignagni added.

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