Health insurance costs are at the heart of our current consumer financial “crisis.” A recent poll asked 2533 Americans what to do about unaffordability. Fifty-nine percent responded, “government should limit healthcare prices to make care more affordable.” In other words, Washington should impose price controls on services, goods, and insurance in healthcare. Even states like Indiana and Vermont are considering price caps to address the problem.
Unaffordability in healthcare is certainly not new. Insurance rates have been rising 2-3 times the rate of inflation for the past 25 years. While median household income doubled from 2000 to 2025, insurance prices quadrupled. Drug prices behaved similarly, priced beyond all but the fattest of pocketbooks. Furthermore, increased drug costs contribute to the rise in insurance prices.
Affordability is now touted as a “crisis.” The party out of power, Democrats, can use it as a political bludgeon against the ascendant Republicans. Americans don’t care who broke it. They don’t care who fixes it. They just want prices to come down, NOW! Last year, healthcare costs, mostly insurance, consumed $35,119 per family. In 2026, those costs are projected to increase another 7.9 percent to $37,824 for a family of four.
In the poll above, respondents were presumably referring to consumer prices — what a consumer pays and not the prices that third parties pay. The following analysis focuses solely on the consumer, using “price” to indicate what an average consumer pays out of pocket.
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