Chart of the Day: Health Care Premiums Hardly Increased at All This Year

The Kaiser Family Foundation announced today that large corporations now pay an average of nearly $20,000 per employee for family health premiums. In order to give you a better idea of what this means, here’s a chart showing how much that’s grown from last year:

Adjusted for inflation, big employers are paying about 1.3 percent more for family premiums. At the same time, Obamacare premiums this year will barely rise at all—and if it weren’t for deliberate sabotage efforts by Republicans, Obamacare premiums probably would have declined.

Health care costs are still rising faster than inflation. However, for the past decade there have been only a couple of years with substantial increases. The average increase has been less than 3 percent. It’s still a problem, but it’s a problem that’s getting smaller all the time.