{"id":114585,"date":"2026-02-15T11:27:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/114585\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T11:27:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:27:06","slug":"costs-rise-for-employer-health-coverage-in-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/114585\/","title":{"rendered":"Costs rise for employer health coverage in Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

The cost of health insurance is rising across the board, even among people who get their coverage through an employer, new data shows.\n<\/p>\n

Workers in states like Pennsylvania are spending a higher percentage of their paychecks for employer-sponsored health insurance than in previous years, according to a new report<\/a> published Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund.\n<\/p>\n

A Pennsylvania resident with single-person coverage paid on average more than $4,000 total in premium contributions and annual deductible costs in 2024, the data shows, which represented about 9.5% of the state\u2019s annual median household income.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you just think about it, one out of every $10 that you have in your pocket today could potentially be going to health care over the course of the year,\u201d said David Radley, senior scientist at The Commonwealth Fund\u2019s Tracking Health System Performance initiative.\n<\/p>\n

Those costs were up 27% from the prior year and an increase from where costs were several years ago in 2020, according to the report.\n<\/p>\n

For families, the amount they paid in premiums and deductibles for their employer-sponsored health insurance plans was even greater, reaching more than $10,000 a year.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that level, for some families, [it] forces them to make tough decisions,\u201d Radley said. \u201cEven if they have health insurance coverage, they may be thinking twice, \u2018Should I really go to the doctor if I\u2019m not feeling well? Should I get this particular test? You know, should I fill this prescription?\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Experts say rising insurance costs for businesses and their employees is a consequence of growing health care spending trends nationally, which involve how often people use services and how much they pay for them.\n<\/p>\n

All of that, Radley said, can be driven by hospital consolidation that increases prices for medical services, ongoing health care labor shortages, inflation in the cost of supplies, high utilization of pricey medications like GLP-1 drugs<\/a> and more.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, I think you have to tackle both price and utilization if we want to sort of rein in overall spending,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s really hard to do, because we don\u2019t want to be in a position where we limit access to things that are really beneficial for people. We don\u2019t want to have to ration care in that way. That\u2019s not what our system is about.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[917,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-114585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-health-insurance","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}