Good news for many Americans: cheap health insurance is potentially available through your job. Enrolling in employer-based health insurance is often one of the most affordable options available to Americans with steady full-time jobs. Most companies offer health insurance to new employees within a certain amount of time after their respective hire dates. 

Once this initial waiting period expires, employees have the option of signing up for the offered job-based coverage plans. Declining this option when initially offered means waiting for approximately another year until your employer activates a new general enrollment period again.

Your employer selects a variety of coverage options from which you can choose as an employee. This is because your employer has a deal and/or contract with a specific health insurance provider and is only permitted to offer coverage plans from the company through which he or she is committed. 

Employer-based health insurance is a highly sought-after job perk, which attracts many Americans to positions in companies offering health benefits. The pandemic-affected economy caused reductions in healthcare benefits provided by employers, however. What does job-based health insurance cost?

Job-based health insurance is also known as group coverage or group insurance. The costs of your monthly premiums are split between you and your employer based on your level of plan. Most health insurance offers options for single and family coverage plans. 

Research shows the annual cost of employer-based health insurance averaged $7,739 (single) and $22,221 (family) per employee in 2021. Employers paid an average of eighty-two percent of those costs for single coverage plans and seventy percent for family coverage plans. The average deductible for 2021 employer-based health insurance was $1,397 for large companies and $2,379 for small companies.

The costs of these plans to employees increased by approximately four percent in 2021, however, with a fifty-five percent increase experienced over the past decade. Finding cheap and affordable health insurance for you and/or your family is largely dependent on finding coverage plans combining the best actuarial value with the lowest out-of-pocket expenses.