The average person in the U.S. pays between $74 and $571 per month for health insurance, depending on how they get coverage. Most Americans get insurance through an employer and pay around $120 per month for an individual plan or $571 per month for a family plan. Those numbers represent only the employee’s share; the employer picks up the rest. If you buy coverage on your own through the ACA marketplace, the sticker price is higher, but subsidies can bring costs down dramatically.
Employer-Sponsored Coverage Costs
About half of all Americans get health insurance through a job, making employer coverage the most common type. In 2025, the average worker pays $1,440 per year ($120 per month) for single coverage and $6,850 per year ($571 per month) for family coverage. Family premiums rose about 6% from the prior year, while individual premiums stayed roughly flat.
Those numbers only reflect the employee’s share. Employers cover the majority of the total premium. For family plans, employers pay about 69% of the total cost and employees pay the remaining 31%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data from March 2025. State and local government workers get a slightly better deal, with employers covering 72% on average. The total cost of a family plan is approaching $27,000 per year, but most of that never shows up on your paycheck.
Marketplace and Individual Plan Costs
If you don’t have access to employer coverage, you can buy a plan on the ACA marketplace (sometimes called an “Obamacare” exchange) or directly from an insurer. For a 40-year-old, the average monthly premium before any subsidies breaks down by plan tier: roughly $456 for a Bronze plan (lowest premiums, highest out-of-pocket costs), around $611 for a Silver plan, and about $615 for a Gold plan (higher premiums, lower out-of-pocket costs).
Those are pre-subsidy prices, and most marketplace enrollees don’t pay the full amount. Federal premium tax credits reduce what subsidized enrollees actually owe to an average of just $888 per year, or about $74 per month. That’s less than what many people with employer coverage pay. These enhanced subsidies have been in place since 2021 and kept average payments steady at $888 in both 2024 and 2025. If they expire, the average annual payment for subsidized enrollees is projected to more than double, jumping to roughly $1,904 per year.
Your Age Changes the Price Significantly
In the individual and small-group markets, insurers use age-based pricing. Under federal rules, the oldest enrollees (age 64 and up) can be charged up to three times what the youngest adults pay for the same plan. A 21-year-old might pay $300 per month for a Silver plan while a 64-year-old pays $900 for the exact same coverage in the same zip code. A few states, including New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, use narrower age bands, which means less of a gap between younger and older enrollees. Employer plans, by contrast, charge everyone in the group the same rate regardless of age.
Premiums Are Only Part of the Bill
Your monthly premium gets you in the door, but it doesn’t cover everything when you actually use care. The average annual deductible for employer-based single coverage is $2,085. For family coverage, it’s $4,063. You pay that amount out of pocket before your insurance starts covering most services (preventive care like annual checkups and vaccines are typically covered before the deductible).
After meeting the deductible, you’ll usually still owe copays or coinsurance for visits, prescriptions, and procedures until you hit your plan’s out-of-pocket maximum. For high-deductible health plans in 2025, the maximum out-of-pocket limit is $8,300 for an individual and $16,600 for a family. Once you reach that ceiling, your plan covers 100% of in-network costs for the rest of the year.
Putting it all together, a single worker with employer coverage might pay $1,440 in premiums plus $2,085 in deductible costs before insurance meaningfully kicks in. That’s over $3,500 before copays and coinsurance. In a year with a surgery or chronic condition, total spending could climb toward $8,000 or more before hitting the out-of-pocket cap.
Where You Live Matters
Health insurance premiums vary widely by state and even by county. Rural areas with fewer hospitals and insurers tend to have higher premiums because there’s less competition. States that didn’t expand Medicaid may also see higher marketplace prices. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive states can be several hundred dollars per month for the same type of plan, so national averages may not reflect what you’d actually see when shopping.
Costs Are Expected to Keep Rising
Employer premiums for family coverage rose 6% in 2025, and the outlook suggests steeper increases ahead. Several forces are pushing costs up simultaneously: rising hospital prices, the growing use of expensive weight-loss medications like GLP-1 drugs, and potential tariff impacts on medical supplies. Insurers in the small-group and individual markets have already requested double-digit rate increases for upcoming plan years, which could signal larger jumps in employer plans as well.
For marketplace enrollees, the biggest near-term question is whether enhanced premium tax credits will be renewed. If they expire after 2025, the average subsidized enrollee would see their annual premium payment jump from $888 to an estimated $1,904, a 114% increase. That change alone would reshape what the “average person” pays for individual coverage.