People with work-based health insurance are paying much bigger deductibles than they used to.
Those with single coverage are paying an average deductible this year of $1,318, up some 40 percent since 2010, when the total was $917, according to national data released Tuesday.
It's the key reason why many Americans haven't felt much benefit in recent years as growth in health care spending has slowed, said the report from the California-based Kaiser Family Foundation.
Health insurance premiums this year are up by about 4 percent, with the annual cost of family coverage in employer plans growing to $17,545. Workers are covering, on average, $4,955 of the premium tab.
While outstripping inflation, the growth in premiums is moderate by the standards of health care. Still, there's growing concern that bigger deductibles mean more people with coverage can't afford to get sick.
"The 4 percent increase we're reporting for 2015 — it continues a remarkable 10-year run of moderate increases in premiums and health costs generally," said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, during a confence call with reporters. "But it's also a health cost slowdown which has been, I would say, all but invisible to consumers."
Deductibles are an amount that health insurance enrollees must pay before most health care services are covered as part of an employer-sponsored plan.
Data analyzed by the Minnesota Department of Health suggest that about 95 percent of Minnesota private-sector workers with coverage through an employer had a deductible last year, up from 53 percent in 2002, said Stefan Gildemeister, the state health economist with the health department.