Many Americans are going to have sticker shock when they sign up for health insurance this year.

For the roughly half of Americans who get insurance through their work, premiums are set to grow by another 6 percent on average, up to roughly $27,000 per year for family coverage. That is a 26 percent increase since 2020. Costs have been steadily climbing for a long time now: Rates are more than twice as high as they were in 2010.

And then there are the 24 million people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces who face much higher increases — by 30 percent on average next year because Congress can’t agree on a deal that would keep them lower. This is the sticking point at the center of the ongoing government shutdown.

Defending and expanding federal health care funding ha

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