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By Michael Bielawski
The Green Mountain State will see the highest percentage increase in its healthcare premiums among all 50 states and the highest average premiums overall for 2025. This is according to data from KFF, a healthcare research and news company.
Vermont’s health insurance premiums are increasing 27%, the nation’s highest increase by a wide margin. The next highest increase was in New York at 19%, then Alaska at 15%.
The data was further analyzed by Value Penguin, a research company and a subsidiary of Lending Tree. It states, “From 2024 to 2025, health insurance rates across the nation increased by 7%. Vermont saw the largest jump, at 27%.”
Vermonters will pay for premiums an average of $1,157 per month, another new national high mark. The next highest is Alaska at $1,088 and then New York at $1,038. For 2024 Vermont was second in the nation for highest premiums, at $908 per month versus $948 for Alaska.
Folks getting sicker?
VermontBiz twice notes in its report on this data that overall operational costs for healthcare providers are rising.
“Four consecutive years of rate increases led to a 15% increase in health insurance premiums since 2022. Residents of 42 states will see higher premiums in 2025 – driven by the rising cost of medical care around the country,” it states.
Such is noted again in a quote by Value Penguin‘s health insurance expert Divya Sangameshwar.
“Private Health insurance premiums are rising 7% in 2025, due to ballooning healthcare costs – which get passed on to policyholders in the form of higher premiums,” she said.
The report does not speculate as to what’s causing the rise in expenses to take care of the public.
“Health insurance is getting more expensive, mostly because health care is getting more expensive,” it states. “The cost of medical care has more than doubled since 2000. More expensive medical care means health insurance companies have to pay more when you see a doctor. The companies charge higher rates to make sure they have enough to pay for your care.”
Third oldest state in the nation
in the 2020 census, Vermont was listed as the third oldest state in the nation, after Maine and New Hampshire. Age is a key driver of health care costs.
Workforce shortage driving expenses
The KFF report notes that “as general economic inflation pushes wages upward, health worker wage increases also put upward pressure on medical prices, unless hospitals and other providers can find ways to operate with fewer staff or cut other expenses.” In Vermont, the University of Vermont Health Network paid $112 million for well-paid ‘travel nurses’ last year due to the chronic shortage in nurses.
Large public subsidies?
Sangameshwar is further quoted, “However, most health insurance plans purchased from HealthCare.gov or state marketplaces receive rate subsidies, which significantly lower the monthly premiums that enrollees pay.”
She then adds, “In 2021, the American Rescue Plan introduced a program of enhanced health insurance subsidies which lowered premiums for every enrollee, and capped premiums at 8.6% of income.”
She continues that if Congress chooses not to extend the subsidies, which will expire in 2025, then “millions of Americans can expect a steep increase in how much they’ll pay for health insurance in 2026 and beyond.”
Cost increases outpace economy
The report by KFF is titled “How does medical inflation compare to inflation in the rest of the economy?”
The introduction reads, “Medical care prices and overall health spending typically outpace growth in the rest of the economy. Health costs represent a growing share of gross domestic product and many American families have seen the costs of health services and premiums grow faster than their wages.”
The report notes that healthcare costs are increasing faster than the overall rate of inflation.
“In June 2024, medical prices grew by 3.3% from the previous year, higher than the 3.0% overall annual inflation rate,” it states. “… Since 2000, the price of medical care, including services provided as well as insurance, drugs, and medical equipment, has increased by 121.3%. In contrast, prices for all consumer goods and services rose by 86.1% in the same period.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Health Care, Uncategorized
“Vermont to have highest health insurance premiums in the nation” And yet our legislature thinks they should be spending tax payer’s money telling us how to heat our homes, and what to fuel our vehicles with ? You can’t make this s___ up ! Vote them out, and pass term limits !
It takes a long time for reality to reach the people for whom the extent of their political engagement is voting D.
Costs are high for any goods or services that have been declared a “human right”. Everyone who pays in to the health care system is footing the bill for everyone who does not contribute, and in Vermont, a state run with a philosophy of leftist victimhood worship and unlimited entitlement, the number of people who do not pay is growing every day. It also does not help that those same leftist policies are driving out many of the young who choose to contribute to society, leaving behind a high proportion of retirees and deadbeats. Also, because of leftist policies the cost of housing is high, and that inhibits the in-migration of decent, contributing folks, including doctors and nurses. The UVM system pays a premium to hire traveling nurses, because the cost of living discourages Vermonters from staying here or other professionals from moving here permanently. Does anyone in the legislature see the pattern of causes for these problems?
Vermont is first! What an accomplishment. Our legislators should be proud.
Tarred and feathered was the colonial way of righting wrongs.
Well, Vermont DOES like leading the way so…..
Blame UNITED HEALTH CARE CEO. Do you have stocks with this company?????
Highest healthcare rate increase : Highest covid jab rate.
Be it healthcare, housing, or the minimum wage, artificial and arbitrary government subsidies always result in increased costs. In other words, as ‘demand’ is arbitrarily increased, ‘supply’ always struggles to keep up. It’s a perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons – the conflict between individual and collective rationale.
Believe it or not, after half their number starved to death, the Pilgrims were the first in colonial history to realize what Plymouth Plantation Governor, William Bradford, characterized as “the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
“At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Little did these colonists know at the time that their dismissal of the collective Mayflower Compact and the institution of private property and free enterprise, would, 164 years later, form the basis for the U.S. Constitution establishing the most prosperous free market economy the world has ever known.
Somehow, today, with healthcare instead of corn, we’ve again lost our way.
BLACKMAIL, BRIBERY, AND EMBEZZLEMENT. Now, what was the reason given for the shooting of the C. E. O. of United Health Care???????? Time to remove yourself from the Vermont cave.
The three reasons you just mentioned are never a valid reason to shoot and kill a person. Please don’t justify or legitimize the evil actions of the person who murdered United Health Care’s CEO.
The level of care at our hospitals is weak at best too… Never had so many questionable diagnoses by the student trainee “doctors” at Fletcher Allen. Was sent home with only steroid drops after a massive eye injury once and still suffer from the complications from scar tissue years later. My ophthalmologist at the LASIK center even told me a number of local providers had to write a “cease and desist” letter to Fletcher Allen begging them to stop engaging in this malpractice. If you’re a lawyer, drop me a reply and we can talk—-
The DEI agenda common at many American medical schools is manifesting itself by turning out unqualified practitioners…
And why would this be a surprise to anyone, like everything else in Vermont, Tax, Tax, Tax……………….. It’s your fault you vote these inept fools in year after year
Vermont went all in on Obamacare, the exchange, the hospitals buying up private practices. Wasn’t Obamacare supposed save us money. Every time government gets involved they make it worse!!!!!! Get out of my healthcare!!!!
Of course this is matched by the highest longevity in the nation .
Oh , it’s not?
Then this report is fake news made up to make us feel bad(again). Well maybe it’s not fake but I still feel bad.
Wonder where all the $$$$ have gone. Perhaps the millions to the hospital officers at our non profit hospital.—- can only imagine what it would be if they were for profit.
Our system of healthcare only treats symptoms, it merely requires the Insurance company model to justify its high cost of Drugs & Testing. No legislation can fix a system that puts profit before patients. Your health is your responsibility, learn as much as you can about what your body needs to heal itself, preferably before the system totally collapses.
Gosh, I just woke up from 2011. Are you saying that Our Savior Shumlin’s brilliant plan from Genius Gruber didn’t work? I’m shocked. Simply shocked!
Our Democrat friends who have controlled both houses of the legislature for 24 of the last 34 years have been trying to fix our “broken” health care system, little by little, with the ultimate goal of creating the nation’s first single payer system. And every time they tweak it to make it better, they make it worse. Of course, the fact that it is worse means that further tweaking is needed. And so we go, round and round, until we sit looking at these numbers. Of course, since Gov. Shumlin’s correctly pronounced single payer dead in December, 2014, there are no longer any goal posts on the field, so we drift with One Care, “leading the nation” to ultimate disaster, except for the fact that the rest of the nation wisely refuses to follow us
So right. The same can be said about our public education system/monopoly. Their unions are the largest donors to our legislators. They tout one of best educational outcomes in the country. If that were true, we would have a happy surplus of small business owners and intelligent entrepreneurs providing jobs and inviting new residents and workers and homes the marketplace would naturally provide. Instead, we have an army of university political administration graduates who form community organizers (aka activists) creating countless new “committees” needing countless new municipal and state staffers to support their new zoning and DEI regulations and enforcement. They are parasites in the process of killing their hosts.
Suppose healthcare premiums have anything to do with “Sanctuary States” and 20 million plus undocumented aliens receiving “FREE” care along with our own legal Medicaid bums?
The lid on the dirty can of UNITED HEATH CARE now is open for the public to see. Public opinion on some websites are supporting the shooting of the C. E. O. . This is a much bigger story than TEL. LIE. VISION. has reported and i would hope the truth will be made public. This was a bad way to solve this problem.
Collusion and conspiracies to commit fraud – when government, NGO’s, non-profits, and private corporations join forces to control a service (education, health, public safety, retirement, housing) they all get a cut and the public get’s the shaft.
Two wings, one bird, all by design!
“The Massachusetts health care reform, commonly referred to as Romneycare, was a healthcare reform law passed in 2006 and signed into law by Governor Mitt Romney with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of the residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL)[2] and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance.
Among its many effects, the law established an independent public authority, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, also known as the Massachusetts Health Connector. The Connector acts as an insurance broker to offer free, highly subsidized and full-price private insurance plans to residents, including through its web site. As such it is one of the models of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. The 2006 Massachusetts law successfully covered approximately two-thirds of the state’s then-uninsured residents, half via federal-government-paid-for Medicaid expansion (administered by MassHealth) and half via the Connector’s free and subsidized network-tiered health care insurance for those not eligible for expanded Medicaid. Relatively few Massachusetts residents used the Connector to buy full-priced insurance.”
Wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with $50/pill Tylenol costs, now would it?