Between 2011 and 2024, health insurance premiums for privately insured Americans grew 78%, or $3,143 per person.
That’s just one of the astounding findings in a new study by Stuart V. Craig, assistant professor of risk and insurance with the Wisconsin School of Business, and Zack Cooper, an associate professor of public health and economics at Yale University. The study was conducted through the Health Care Affordability Lab at Yale University and published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Craig and Cooper examined premiums, healthcare spending, and insurer markups between 2011 and 2024 for the large-group, small-group, and individual (Marketplace) insurance markets. Their primary finding suggests healthcare spending drives the uptick in health insurance premiums—contributing to a whopping 91% of insurance premium growth. The authors suggest a return to more affordable premiums will require a decrease in healthcare spending.
“Our findings make it clear that the rising cost of healthcare services, not insurer profit margins, are the primary source of premium growth over the last two decades,” Craig said. “When many people consider their own household’s healthcare expenditure, they think about their payroll deduction or the big check they write to their health insurer. The fact is that most of this premium goes toward paying doctors and hospitals on behalf of the people who pay in.”
Craig and Cooper created a public, interactive data visualization tool that helps consumers understand why the cost of premiums are rising and how they have changed over the last 15 years. Users can track insurer markups and spending and see how their state compares nationally. For a deeper dive, users can even download the original dataset.
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