Families are paying nearly $7,500 a year for health insurance. The next price hike is already looming.

Health insurance costs have soared for workers and employers.

Luis Alvarez/Getty Images Workers on family health insurance plans paid $7,471 for premiums in 2026, a 9% increase from 2025.

Costs are even higher at smaller businesses: Workers there pay nearly $10,000 for family premiums.

Rising premiums have outpaced wage growth, and are only expected to increase more in 2027.

It's costing families nearly $7,500 a year for health insurance — and more increases are looming.

A 2026 health benefits survey from KFF found that workers on a family plan paid an average of $7,471 a year in premiums — a 9% increase from 2025.

And that's just the worker contribution — when accounting for employer contributions, family plan premiums totaled $28,303 in 2026, a roughly 5% increase from 2025.

That's a hefty price for both workers and their employers, and even more acute for workers at smaller businesses : KFF's survey found that at firms with fewer than 200 employees, they paid nearly $10,000 toward family premiums in 2026.

Smaller firms are often more beholden to insurance companies, since they don't wield the same bargaining power as larger firms.

Mounting health costs might be part of why consumers feel so gloomy: As wages have increased, insurance premiums have risen even faster.

While wages increased 3.7% year-over-year for workers — which might look like a nice pay bump on paper — worker-paid premiums outpaced that salary growth, rising by 9%.

And over the past few years, how much workers pay for health plans has eaten up a larger share of their household income.

For workers across all firms, their premium costs amounted to nearly 8% of real household median income in 2025.

Are you worried about rising health insurance costs, or already paying thousands out of pocket? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected] .