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. 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%.