Health Insurance Costs Crush Worker Paychecks for 25 Years
Ben Sullivan
For the 160 million Americans who get health insurance through their jobs, a stark reality has been building for decades. Between 1999 and 2024, family premiums for employer-sponsored coverage climbed 342%. Workers’ contributions to those premiums rose 308%. Their actual earnings? Up just 119%.
That’s not a gap. That’s a chasm, and it’s widening every year.
A new economic analysis in JAMA Network Open documents what millions of families already know from their paychecks: health coverage is...