Consumer spending for out-of-pocket (OOP) health care costs will rise to an estimated $491.6 billion in 2021, a 10% increase this year over what consumers paid in 2020, according to the fifth annual report on OOP from Kalorama Information, a medical market research publisher. Annual increases in deductibles, copayments and coinsurance have pushed up OOP costs from about $250 per person in 1980 to $1,650 in 2021, the report noted. In the report, Kalorama also said that such costs are expected to rise by 9.9% through 2026 and that health plan premiums have increased at a faster rate than that of overall prices and workers’ earnings.
