{"id":219618,"date":"2026-01-06T12:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219618\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T12:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:35:16","slug":"health-care-cost-anxiety-peaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219618\/","title":{"rendered":"Health care cost anxiety peaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The anxiety follows substantial increases in health care costs throughout 2025. The average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance climbed to $17,496 in 2025, up 6% from the previous year and well above inflation and wage growth, according to Mercer\u2019s 2025 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans. The Kaiser Family Foundation found premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached nearly $27,000 a year in 2025, with workers contributing $6,850 towards the cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The anxiety follows substantial increases in health care costs throughout 2025. The average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3404,63846,527,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-219618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-anxiety","9":"tag-gallup","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}