Employer-sponsored health insurance covers 165.6 million Americans. It’s the default. For lots of workers, it’s a key reason to accept a job offer, or to stay in a job.

But that system is slowly imploding. As premiums have grown explosively — the average employer plan now prices out at $27,000 for family coverage — businesses have passed more costs onto their workers.

And, as STAT News reporter Bob Herman wrote in July: America's Small Businesses are Giving Up on Health Insurance.

That story kicked off a series, Out of Pocket, Out of Reach, with a subtitle that says it all: “How America's Employer-Based Healthcare System Continues to Crumble in Slow Motion.”

Bob covers the business of health care for STAT News. His rigorous investigative journalism recently earned him the coveted title of “UnitedHealth’s least favorite reporter.”

He joins us to unpack how the skyrocketing cost of providing health insurance is affecting companies large and small.

And he talks with Dan about how the hidden nature of those costs obscures our understanding of just how much the larger health care system is squeezing out of us, eroding our wages and even our freedom to leave crappy jobs.

Here's a transcript of this episode.

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