Every company is different, but as the one who oversees the healthcare benefit for my pico-business, I have the premiums figures at the employer end, and I certainly do not see 4% yoy increases, it is closer to 2-3X that, and while multiple anecdotes are not data, other small business owners I speak with report the same. Likely the 4% surveyed figure is coming from the big employers who have negotiating leverage. These inflation figures come from self-reported numbers (I occasionally get the survey requests), and not from the federal government actually dipping into the insurers' databases and retrieving real data.

The situation is admittedly all kinds of outrageous. Anything short of the immediate (within three months) death of the medical industry as the US knows it will fail to bring about competitive, meaningful, lasting reforms. Personally, I've come to terms with accepting that for the most part, I can only realistically, roughly afford 1960's-level Cuban embargo-like care standards in the US to be able to give my children a better shot: basically, anything really expensive like cancer or some chronic neurological wasting disease (dementia especially), and I'm euthanizing myself with CO2. I terminated my term life insurance upon realizing the odds get better with each passing year that I will come down with a geriatric-related condition, and euthanasia to protect my family's financial standing from medical bills (the number one personal bankruptcy cause in the US) is a disqualifying event in all life insurance policies.

I carry catastrophic coverage to handle a situation like a broken limb, and we choose policies with 100% in- and out-of-network coverage, but situations that become apparent that will develop into really financially-draining scenarios over time will quickly start an evaluation of the breakeven point to pull the ripcord, so to speak. Not pleasant to think about or discuss, but necessary to assure my family's future. I certainly don't advocate anyone else do this, just sharing my own personal planning hoping to see other non-traditional reactions posted.

At about the same time, I rejected out-of-hand the blind acceptance of the party line from the medical establishment, and instead adopted a verify-first-then-trust-the-data approach. If blood panel results I purchase myself over a period of months and years don't mesh with the received wisdom of the medical establishment, then I go with the data and ignore their "wisdom". When you hear "keep doing whatever it is you're doing that is getting these results" from medical professionals enough times, after they incredulously interrogated why you're engaging in what they professionally have been trained to counsel as risky habits, you begin to trust your own judgement. Test, Test, Test, and make incremental, measurable changes. The fitness community over the Net has been of greater help to my fitness level and overall medical condition in the past several years than all the doctor advice I've received over many decades. My personal conclusion is the US farming, food, pharma and medical industries, government regulatory agencies and professional associations have their pecuniary interests so hopelessly intertwined, it is safer to simply assume the industries (not individual practitioners, many of whom deeply care about their corner of the world and are outstanding) select profit over any other factor to the point they are functionally openly hostile to your health.