The Kaiser Family Foundation today released a sobering report about the state of health care costs in America. Employees are paying on average $4,000 per year for their share of family health care coverage this year. That’s 14 percent, or $482, more than they paid last year.
That far outpaces the overall 3 percent increase in family health premiums, meaning families are increasingly shouldering the burden of health care costs.
Overall, average annual family health care premium costs have increased by 114 percent since 2000, from $6,438 to $13,770. But over that time, workers’ shares have increased by 147 percent, from $1,619 to $3,997. Families shelled out 29 percent of the cost of health care premiums this year, as opposed to a quarter a decade ago.
Just to be clear, this report is on nationwide health care costs, not federal employees’ costs. But these trends don’t bode well for feds either, especially since feds’ share of FEHBP costs have also gradually increased over time — most recently from 31 percent in 2009 to 33 percent in 2010 for the popular Blue Cross standard family plan. (That also means Blue Cross standard family enrollees are paying higher-than-average shares, according to Kaiser’s data.)
