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Being sick is expensive, but being prepared for it is becoming exorbitant.
And for Pennsylvanians who buy their own health insurance, it's about to get worse.
This week, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department announced approved rate increases for 2027 policies on Pennie, Pennsylvania's Affordable Care Act marketplace. Individual policies will jump an average of nearly 16%, and small business plans will rise over 10%.
At a time when gas or ground beef can spike 10% overnight, double-digit increases might feel almost routine. But this comes directly on top of a 21.5% hike in 2026.
Before that, increases were more modest cost-of-living adjustments: 5% in 2025, 3.9% in 2024, 4% to 5% in 2023 and just 0.2% in 2022.
Single-digit increases are easier to swallow when so many other medical costs are rising, too.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average hospital stay is about $14,000 -- or it was in 2019 when that agency last updated its stats. Considering there's been a pandemic and massive inflation since then, they might want to update that.
The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project -- a kind of network of information from a public-private partnership --puts the 2026 number at around $3,086 per day. These are how much it costs to produce the care you receive. What you pay might be quite different.
Prescription drugs can be another $100 or so a month -- considerably more with diagnoses like diabetes or asthma. An out-of-pocket doctor visit could top $170. The emergency room might be $4,000.
The way these stack up is why people have health insurance. For healthy people, it's a hedge against the unexpected. For those with medical needs, it's a lifeline.
Amazingly, these are less than the requests insurance companies submitted. The insurance department said it blocked $95 million in proposed increases for the coming year but had to acknowledge the $845 million increased claims insurance companies faced in 2025.
While the higher premiums are the problem for the insured, the issue for Pennsylvanians overall is that higher prices mean fewer customers. More than 200,000 people canceled coverage over increases last year that were estimated at 300% for some people.
That meant more than 200,000 people dropped their coverage, taking the risk that they wouldn't face an accident or serious illness.
That's a risk, but many of those taking the bet are the younger people with fewer healthcare issues. It might work out for them -- or they could end up being among the 62% of bankrupt Americans whose money troubles relate to medical debt.
But the consequences don't stop with the uninsured.
Take younger, healthier people out of the mix and the insured pool becomes a group more likely to file claims and require payouts from insurance companies. It also means that uninsured people who end up in an emergency room could require treatment that falls on hospitals to provide under unfunded federal mandates.
We all know getting sick is expensive. But impossible increases shouldn't become a chronic condition.