Health Insurance Premiums Price History
1999–2025 · Kaiser Family Foundation
The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health insurance in the United States, tracked from 1999 to 2025. This is the combined cost — what your employer pays plus what gets yanked from your paycheck every two weeks. Back in 1999, a family plan ran about $5,800 a year. Today it's north of $26,000, which means health insurance alone eats up roughly a third of the median household's take-home pay. The rate of increase has slowed a bit since the double-digit spikes of the early 2000s, but premiums still outpace wage growth by a wide margin every single year.
Price in 1999
$5,791.00
Price in 2025
$26,000.00
Total Change
+349.0%
Years Tracked
26
Health Insurance Premiums Over Time
Compare to inflation: The chart above shows nominal (not inflation-adjusted) prices. Use the toggle to switch to inflation-adjusted values when available, or try the inflation calculator to convert any amount between years.
Key Insights
- Family premiums have jumped from $5,791 in 1999 to over $26,000 in 2025 — a 349% increase in just 26 years, while cumulative inflation over the same period was roughly 95%.
- The early 2000s were brutal: premiums spiked 11-14% annually from 2001 to 2004. Nothing since has matched that pace, but 5-7% annual hikes have become the stubborn new normal.
- Workers are shouldering a bigger slice of the bill than ever. Employee contributions have grown faster than the employer share, and the average worker now pays about $6,500 a year just in premiums before they even use the insurance.
- The ACA's arrival in 2014 didn't bend the cost curve nearly as much as advocates hoped — premiums rose another 55% from 2014 to 2025, though the growth rate did stabilize somewhat compared to the pre-ACA era.
Year-by-Year Data
| Year | Price (USD per year) | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | $5,791.00 | — |
| 2000 | $6,438.00 | +11.2% |
| 2001 | $7,061.00 | +9.7% |
| 2002 | $8,003.00 | +13.3% |
| 2003 | $9,068.00 | +13.3% |
| 2004 | $9,950.00 | +9.7% |
| 2005 | $10,880.00 | +9.3% |
| 2006 | $11,480.00 | +5.5% |
| 2007 | $12,106.00 | +5.5% |
| 2008 | $12,680.00 | +4.7% |
| 2009 | $13,375.00 | +5.5% |
| 2010 | $13,770.00 | +3.0% |
| 2011 | $15,073.00 | +9.5% |
| 2012 | $15,745.00 | +4.5% |
| 2013 | $16,351.00 | +3.8% |
| 2014 | $16,834.00 | +3.0% |
| 2015 | $17,545.00 | +4.2% |
| 2016 | $18,142.00 | +3.4% |
| 2017 | $18,764.00 | +3.4% |
| 2018 | $19,616.00 | +4.5% |
| 2019 | $20,576.00 | +4.9% |
| 2020 | $21,342.00 | +3.7% |
| 2021 | $22,221.00 | +4.1% |
| 2022 | $22,463.00 | +1.1% |
| 2023 | $23,968.00 | +6.7% |
| 2024 | $25,572.00 | +6.7% |
| 2025 | $26,000.00 | +1.7% |
Sources & Methodology
Data comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation / Health Research & Educational Trust Employer Health Benefits Survey, conducted annually since 1999. KFF surveys roughly 2,000 employers each year — a mix of small firms, mid-size companies, and large corporations — weighted to be nationally representative. The premium figures here represent the total annual cost of family coverage, combining both the employer and employee contributions. These are averages across all plan types (HMO, PPO, POS, HDHP). They don't include out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and copays, which have also risen sharply over this period.
Primary source: Kaiser Family Foundation
For a full explanation of how we collect and adjust data, see our methodology page.