More Evidence of Sharp Health Insurance Price Increases for 2026

For already stretched middle-income and even upper-middle income families, the news on health insurance costs for 2026 is looking very grim.  This group largely gets coverage from work and pays a substantial proportion of the premiums, especially for family coverage.  The ongoing evidence as rates are developed and filed by health plans and large self-funded employers comment on their medical cost trend is that we are going to see a very big jump in premiums for 2026.  A recent survey by the International Foundation for Employee Benefit Plans indicates that the trend could be as much as a median of 10%, compared to 8% for 2025.  That is a huge increase in a two-year period.  That means that have the employers expect a larger increase and half a smaller one.  Unclear what the employee-weighted average will be.

Among those employers surveyed, 31% said the single biggest factor in the increase was catastrophic claims, 23% said the cost of specialty drugs, 15% said chronic health condition spending and 11% said increases in provider prices due to input cost rises for those providers.  Among specialty drugs, the new weight loss drugs, cancer drugs and cell and gene therapies were singled out.  Asked how they intended to address these increases, employers unfortunately cited employee cost-sharing as the main method, along with plan design changes, i.e., lower benefits.  Also cited were various utilization control and provider price control tactics. (IFEBP Survey)

As I said, this is hard on employers, but even harder on employees.  The real solutions require pain and work and nothing tried so far is really making much of a dent.