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Does the rise in ACA premiums affect employer-provided health insurance premiums?
There are a lot of moving parts, individual premiums and annual increases have little to do with employer premiums and annual increases and vice versa.  Most people think of XYZ insurer as a single company with a single pool of insured folks.  This common knowledge isn't accurate.  Insurers pool their business segments separately.  This means that Individual, small business, mid-size business, and large business are all different operating segments from the viewpoint of the insurer.    It's possible to argue that because so many people are covered by employer plans that individual plans have a hard time accumulating the required critical mass of subscribers to keep increases reasonable.   Age banded rating: Individual coverage and small group coverage is age rated, meaning every year you get older.  In addition to your age increase, the premium table for your plan also receives an increase.  Employers with 100+ eligible employees are composite rated (in general), meaning every employee costs the same amount.  The 18 year old employee costs $500 per month, the 64 year old costs $500 per month.  Generally, the contributions an employee pays to participate in the plan are also common among all ages.  This means that on a micro level increases can be more incremental because the employer is abstracting the gross premium.  Composite rating generally benefits older folks while age rating generally benefits younger folks. Employer Morale Incentive: Generally the cost to an employee covered by an employer plan isn't directly correlated to the gross premium, and increases to the contribution(s) aren't necessarily correlated to the increases the employer receives.  Employers are incentivised by employee morale.  It's pretty common for employers to shoulder a disproportionate amount of an increase to keep everyone happy.  Employers may offset the increase by shopping some ancillary benefit like group life insurance, or bundling the dental program with the medical carrier.  Remember, employees don't pay premiums they pay contributions and some employers are more generous than others.  Employers are also better at budgeting for planned increases than individuals are. Regulators: In many of the states that are making the news because of their healthcare premium increases there simply isn't a regulator scrutinizing increases.  California requires all individual and small group premiums to be filed with the state and increases must be justified with some sort of math and approved by a regulator.  Without this kind of oversight insurers have only the risk of subscriber flight to adjust plan provisions and press harder during provider contract negotiations. Expiring Transitional Reinsurance Fee and Funds: One of the fees introduced by healthcare reform paid by insurers and self-insured employers established a pot of money that individual plans could tap to cope with the new costs of the previously uninsurable folks.  This fee and corresponding pot of money is set to expire and can no longer be taken in to account by underwriters. Increased Treatment Availability: It's important that as new facilities go online, insurer costs will increase.  If a little town gets a new cancer clinic, that pool will see more cancer treatment costs simply as a result of increased treatment availability.  Consider that medical care inflation is running at about 4.9% annually as of the most recent CPI table, the rest of the increases will result from the performance of that specific risk pool.  If that risk pool had a lot of cancer diagnoses, you're looking at a big increase.  If that risk pool was under priced the prior year you will see an above average increase, etc.