Most bad financial news arrives as a surprise. This one is arriving with a calendar attached. Healthcare costs are walloping American workers now, and according to a new estimate from the benefits-consulting firm Aon, they will get materially worse in 2027 — possibly the biggest employer health-insurance increase in at least two decades.
The numbers, in plain terms: someone with workplace coverage is expected to spend an average of $5,297 on healthcare this year. That is $388 more than in 2025. Because workers typically pay a share of the premium, when the employer’s cost jumps, yours jumps roughly in step.
Why this is a planning story, not a news story
You cannot do much about the rate of medical inflation. You can do quite a lot about how it hits your household, and almost all of it has to happen in a window that opens in about ten weeks — open enrollment, which for most employer plans falls in October or November.
Three things to have decided before the packet shows up.
Which plan design actually fits you. A high-deductible plan paired with a health savings account is cheaper on premium and carries the single best tax treatment in the American tax code — contributions go in before tax, grow untaxed, and come out untaxed for medical expenses. If you are healthy and have an emergency cushion, a premium increase of this size makes that trade-off better, not worse. If you have a chronic condition or a planned surgery, the math flips, and a richer plan that costs more per paycheck can still be the cheaper year.
Whether your spouse’s plan is now the better one. Employers do not raise costs uniformly. Households that have never compared the two plans side by side often find a few thousand dollars of difference once the new rates land.
What the retirement-savings trade-off is. This is the part people miss. A $388-and-rising increase in healthcare spending, for many households, comes straight out of the 401(k) contribution rate. It is worth deciding in advance that it will not — that the cut comes from somewhere with a lower long-term cost than your own retirement.
If you are near or in retirement
The employer number is not your number, but the direction is. Medicare premiums and supplemental plans reprice off the same medical-cost trend, and the 2027 figures arrive in the fall. If you retired on a healthcare budget built two years ago, it is worth having someone re-run it before the fourth quarter, when the choices get made.
The Journal’s own chart on this is blunt: per-capita out-of-pocket healthcare spending has climbed steadily since 2017 and shows no sign of a plateau. This is not a year to wait for the forecast to change. It is a year to check the roof.