Nearly 700,000 Bay Staters are facing the prospect of double-digit premium increases next year as insurers struggle to handle cost pressures across the healthcare landscape, possibly exacerbating affordability woes for patients.
Insurers in the merged market, where many individuals and small businesses get coverage, have proposed an average rate hike of 12.9% for 2027, according to plans posted online by the Division of Insurance. Insurers last year sought an average rate hike of 13.4%.
“This is just absolutely unaffordable — you know, four times the benchmark, more like five times the rate of inflation,” Retailers Association of Massachusetts President Jon Hurst said, referring to the statewide healthcare cost growth benchmark. “I am continuing to get more and more frustrated that there is just a lack of concern, not only within the healthcare industry but amongst our elected leaders, about what is happening to small businesses, to small employers on Main Street. Everybody’s seeing high increases, but small businesses have been getting far higher increases than big business or big government.”…