Overview:
Whether they have an employer-sponsored or government-sponsored medical insurance, Americans are seeing eye-popping increases in healthcare costs for next year.
TikTok user EbonyElyse has had it with healthcare costs and wanted everyone on the app to know it.
Faced with skyrocketing healthcare insurance costs — monthly premiums for her family will almost triple, from $480 this year to around $1,500 in 2026, with a $2,000 deductible — she opened her phone camera, sat in her car and vented.
“How can I possibly survive paying $1,500 a month just in medical coverage?!” she said, adding that her employer also kicked off spouses who can get health insurance on their own. “And I work in [health care]!! How is this fair? How can anybody live?!”
RELATED: As Health Care Costs Triple, Black Families Pay Even More
She’s not alone. As open enrollment season begins for choosing employer-sponsored or government-subsidized health insurance, Americans nationwide are experiencing sticker shock at how much more they’ll pay for health insurance in the coming year.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga, has also taken to social media to sound the alarm about these exploding costs. He says new data show some 2026 plans cost almost $20,000 more than this year’s. Federal health care cuts in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed in July are to blame. The Democrats’ refusal to greenlight permanent cuts to health care is the main sticking point between them and Republicans in the government shutdown.
Plenty of Warning
As Americans begin to feel the pain of crazy-high healthcare premiums, the stalemate in Congress is on the verge of becoming a full-blown crisis for the Black community. That’s because Black Americans face higher rates of chronic diseases that require constant management when compared to white people, along with generally lower incomes and fewer savings, which will make the impact of rising healthcare premiums and costs hurt even more.
Black American families with employer-sponsored coverage are facing a double squeeze: higher premiums, passed along from employers, and increased cost-sharing, all while median household income for Black families trails the national median.
Experts say that unless Republicans agree to Democrats’ demands to preserve tax subsidies that help people pay for Affordable Care Act insurance plans, and reverse Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — two legislative actions that could keep overall healthcare costs lower — costs will continue to soar.
If that happens, they say, some Black individuals and families face tough choices: pay budget-crushing healthcare premiums and perhaps skimp on treatments and prescriptions to save money on out-of-pocket costs, or forego healthcare altogether and risk paying crippling medical bills if they or a loved one gets sick.
Last year, roughly one-third of adults said “that in the past 12 months they have skipped or postponed getting the health care they needed because of the cost,” according to a KFF Health News poll. The numbers are even worse for the uninsured, with three in four uninsured adults under age 65 saying they didn’t get needed medical care because of the cost.
The expiring ACA tax credits are only one reason experts began warning that cutting healthcare programs would send Americans’ insurance costs into the stratosphere.
Economists, including Congress’s own economics experts, said the trillions of dollars cut from Medicaid and other social programs would directly benefit the wealthy. And public health advocates have also warned that low-income Americans, including Black Americans, will experience the most harm since their paychecks take a proportionately larger healthcare bite.
Also, Black Americans face higher rates of chronic disease, along with generally lower incomes and fewer savings, which makes the impact of rising premiums and costs sting even more.
Undercutting the Affordable Care Act
Data from the congressional committee that helps with issues on taxation show that 95% of the health care tax credits go to Americans earning less than $200,000 each year. Households earning less than $80,000 per year receive the vast majority of tax credits.
If the tax credits expire, almost 5 million Americans will drop into the ranks of the uninsured, according to the Urban Institute. The health insurance trade association AHIP argues that it would be a disaster.
Millions of Americans “will experience the unaffordable costs and consequences throughout 2026,” AHIP said in a statement. Those include the financial pain of “steeply higher out-of-pocket costs for their coverage each month or through the ongoing stress of having lost the coverage that provided them with access to high-quality care at a price they could afford.”
Nevertheless, there is still time to protect Americans from the largest spike in health care costs in history and to ensure consumers see immediate relief in 2026,” according to the AHIP statement.
Results of a KFF Health News survey released Wednesday found that the annual medical insurance costs for a family of four jumped more $1,400 this year compared to last year.
The KFF survey polled 1,862 public and private U.S. employers between January and July 2025, with workforces of at least 10 people. KFF data showed that roughly 150 million people under age 65 receive employer-sponsored insurance.
“There is a quiet alarm bell going off,” Drew Altman, president and CEO of the healthcare policy nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said in a statement. “Employers have nothing new in their arsenal that can address most of the drivers of their cost increases, and that could well result in an increase in deductibles and other forms of employee cost sharing again, a strategy that neither employers nor employees like but companies resort to in a pinch to hold down premium increases.”
Black Americans enrolled in Medicaid have lower out-of-pocket costs than individuals with private insurance. Enrollees under age 65 paid an average annual out-of-pocket cost of $236, compared with about $656 for people in the same age group with private insurance.
Employers surveyed by KFF most often said prescription drug prices contributed most to cost increases.
Premiums for families have risen almost 26% since 2020, and KFF said increases will probably continue next year if employers can’t find ways to lower their costs.