September 3, 2010 3:20PM # KFF/HRET Survey Part II: Isn’t This Good News, Too? By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE As I [blogged](https://www.cato.org/kffhret-survey-part-i-some-people-dont-know-good-news-when-they-see-it/) earlier, yesterday the [Kaiser Family Foundation](http://www.kff.org/) and the [Health Research & Educational Trust](http://www.hret.org/) released their [survey of employer-sponsored health benefits](http://ehbs.kff.org/) in 2010. For most of this survey’s history, it included a very useful graph of the average growth rate of employer-sponsored insurance premiums. Here’s the graph from [their 2007 survey](http://www.kff.org/insurance/7672/upload/76723.pdf): ![Media Name: 201009_blog_cannon32.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/201009_blog_cannon32.jpg?itok=sOdNs4ER) (The grey and light-green lines represent year-to-year growth in overall inflation and wages, respectively.) Unfortunately, 2007 was the last year that KFF/HRET included that graph in their annual survey. Had they included that graph this year, it would have shown an even more heartening moderation of premium growth: ![Media Name: 201009_blog_cannon33.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/201009_blog_cannon33.jpg?itok=wvzn0e2b) A lot of things can drive premium growth. I discussed a couple of them in my [last post](https://www.cato.org/kffhret-survey-part-i-some-people-dont-know-good-news-when-they-see-it/). Some factors that could cause premium growth to moderate might not be all that welcome; if insurers dumped all their sick enrollees, for example. But absent dramatic evidence of that, isn’t this good news? And isn’t good news worth highlighting? ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).