via Wall Street Journal
The average cost of health coverage offered by employers pushed above $18,000 for a family plan this year, though the growth was slowed by the accelerating shift into high-deductible plans, according to a major survey.
Annual premium cost rose 3% to $18,142 for an employer family plan in 2016, from $17,545 last year, according to the annual poll of employers performed by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation along with the Health Research & Educational Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the American Hospital Association.
Employees paid 30% of the premiums for a family plan in 2016, compared with 29% last year, according to Kaiser. For an individual worker, the average annual cost of employer coverage was $6,435 in this year’s survey, with employees paying 18% of that total. The change in annual premium for individual coverage from 2015 wasn’t statistically significant.
