Employer health insurance coverage costs are expected to jump 7% next year, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

Health insurance costs are climbing at the highest rate in years and they're not expected to ease anytime soon. Data provided to The Wall Street Journal from the firm's Mercer and Willis Towers Watson say employer coverage costs will go up about six and a half percent next year. Back in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, prices rose two and a half percent. Joining us now is Anna Willy Matthews. She's a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where she recently covered this trend. Anna, thanks for joining us, the cost of insurance has a ripple effect, more expensive for the companies, but also more expensive for workers. As you report, why is it climbing so much. 

Well, it's really the biggest thing is the delayed inlet of inflation, so inflation is easing in a lot of parts of the economy. We see those headlines, but yet it's sort of belatedly showing up in health insurance and that's because hospitals have been facing higher costs for nurses and other staffing also for their other supplies and they are asking for higher prices from the health insurers. But because they're often on contracts that take a couple years to come up, it's only now really hitting the insurance costs. Another driver of the higher costs is drug costs. I think we all have seen out there the expense of medicines and a particular one that employers are seeing is the weight loss and diabetes drugs. Wegovi. Ozzeic. More and more people are taking those drugs and they are costly. So who's being hit hardest. 

Well, it's really what I hear is hitting employers across the board. Big, small, all kinds of insurance. It may depend on sort of what's going on in your particular market. Whether your hospitals in your area have negotiated really big increases or maybe they haven't hit yet, but it is hitting across the board. It's affecting employers and it's affecting their employees because as you know we all pay a portion of our health insurance out of our paychecks and that does tend to go up as the cost goes up, the price increases as you mentioned were easing until three years ago. How do we get back to that trend? Is it going to take as long as it did with the delay of inflation. 

Know if that were easy to solve for insurance would be a lot cheaper, but no one really knows. I think there is concern that the increases could continue for a while as again, the effects of the inflation kind of roll into the cost of health insurance. And that is a belated thing that's taking sort of happening in waves. Insurers are saying that they are doing things to bring down costs and employers may take steps of their own, so one thing that workers might see is perhaps they might end up paying more outof pocket employers have not been increasing deductibles so much in the recent years, but that could change again. And another thing that employers can do to bring down costs is maybe go with a health plan with a smaller network, so fewer doctors and hospitals to choose from that can bring down their costs. Any other advice, you know, as we all try to do, you try to practice prevention, go to the doctor as much as you can within what's covered, but any other advice to make sure that you save, or something that can prepare people for what's coming next year. 

Yeah you know people just it's very personal people have to make their own decisions. One thing that is good to do is always try to check a ahead of time if you can, and that's not always easy. But there is growing transparency around the cost of care, cost of procedures and they can very, very excuse me. They can vary widely so depending on what hospital go to, depending on what doctor you see, you might pay a lot more or a lot less, so it is worth checking if you can before you go.