In their drive to further boost already booming profits, health insurance bosses are jacking up monthly premiums by the most in 15 years, tightening the squeeze on working-class families as we confront a deepening capitalist economic crisis marked by high prices on food, rent and other basic necessities, as well as declining openings for decent-paying full-time jobs.
Health insurance premiums are projected to increase by 6.5% to 18% in 2026, in some cases even more, reports KFF, a health research organization. UnitedHealthcare — the largest of these companies, with a whopping 14.9% of the market — claims its rate boosts are necessary to compensate its bosses for “uncertainty” over where the economy is heading.
The top six health insurance outfits — UnitedHealth Group, Kaiser Permanente, Anthem, Ambetter, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna — have cornered over 50% of the market.
Getting decent medical care is already out of reach for millions of working people. A recent poll found 91 million adults in the U.S. “said that if they were to need medical care, they would not be able to pay for it,” the New York Times reported Sept. 4.
Drug prices are also climbing, and health insurance bosses are denying workers’ prescription drug claims more and more, seeking to put more cash into profits. Such rejections rose by 25% from 2016 to 2023, Komodo Health reported after reviewing 4 billion claims. And the companies’ stepped-up use of AI to handle these claims has made matters worse.
Shuttered maternity wards, hospitals
Recent cuts to Medicaid approved by Congress in July are projected to hit close to $1 trillion over the next decade. This will accelerate the pace of maternity ward and rural hospital closures. This trend is nothing new. It has been growing for two decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Bosses claim it’s no longer profitable to keep them open.
Since 2005, 195 rural hospitals have closed across the country, and over 1,000 more have cut inpatient services. Another “768 hospitals in the U.S. are at risk of closing,” with 315 facing shutdowns in the next three years, reports Healthcare Brew.
In 2024 women in the U.S. had no access to birthing centers or maternity care providers in 35% of the country’s counties. This means a crisis in the health and lives of millions of women, their families and their newborn babies.
Women in rural areas now have to travel greater and greater distances to get basic pregnancy care, if it’s possible at all. In Harlan County, Kentucky, for example, “residents are 79 miles from the closest birthing hospital, and with additional closures this could increase to 95 miles,” the Washington Post reports.
Among those being impacted the most by rising health care costs are retired workers on Social Security. For fully 39% of them, this is their only monthly income. Cost-of-living increases are projected to be just 2.8% next year, with the final figure to be announced in mid-October. And the government will use most of this “raise” to pay for higher Medicare premiums and prescription drug costs.
Some 15% of older adults live in poverty today, the U.S. Census Bureau says. And nearly a million more seniors found themselves in this position in 2024.
“American Workers Feel Less Confident About Finding a Job,” the Sept. 8 Wall Street Journal informed us, quoting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But workers didn’t need the Journal or some bank to tell us this.
The following day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics admitted that from early 2024 through March 2025, 911,000 fewer jobs were actually created than the government had said earlier. This includes nearly 100,000 less jobs in manufacturing.
And things haven’t gotten much better since. The number of workers the government counts as unemployed rose to 7.4 million in August, and another 4.7 million who need to work full time have had to accept part-time hours. Millions more aren’t counted as being in the workforce by the government, which ignores them as too “discouraged” to keep looking.