Employers shift rising healthcare costs onto millions of workers

As the midterm elections approach, Americans are ranking healthcare near or at the top of their financial concerns, according to a recent poll from KFF, a nonprofit health research group. Roughly 6 in 10 adults reported they were very or somewhat worried about affording care. The majority of Americans -- about 157 million -- get insurance through their employer. But as costs for coverage have spiked, with increases in the high single digits, businesses have been shifting much more of the additional expenses onto their workforces. Employees are paying more for coverage, especially if they work for a small business, according to KFF, which released its annual survey of employers about their health benefits. Many people are also paying thousands of dollars in medical expenses when they get sick because companies have increased the plans' deductibles to offset increases in premiums. The yearly price, on average, for employees to cover their family is now $7,471 a year, up 9% from 2025. The total cost for a family plan, including the amount the employer contributes to the annual premiums, has reached $28,303. Overall, the average deductible for U.S. workers is approaching $2,000 before insurance kicks in, according to the survey. For their part, employers attribute higher costs to several factors, including hospital care, expensive new cancer therapies and expanding coverage of GLP-1 medications for obesity and diabetes. The rollbacks in government programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act have also left more people without health coverage, according to a separate survey from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research foundation that analyzes Americans' experience with insurance every other year. The fund has been a longtime supporter of the ACA. The share of working-age adults who are uninsured rose to 11.2% in 2026 from 8.9% in 2024, the Commonwealth study showed. Conducted from early May through mid-July, the study has provided one of the first indications of whether people no longer enrolled in Medicaid and Obamacare found other sources of insurance. The Trump administration is expected to release official figures on the number of uninsured Americans next year. The increase in the uninsured rate was not unexpected, with some estimates showing that nearly 5 million people dropped their individual coverage. Many were no longer able to afford their Obamacare insurance after President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers declined to extend pandemic-era subsidies that had helped defray the cost of a typical plan.