Six for ‘26: High Considerations for Advantages Leaders Heading into 2026 Planning

Advantages leaders on the nation’s largest employers are managing huge healthcare price will increase, and that’s driving change in how they design their well being advantages choices. I’ve talked to greater than 100 advantages leaders in current months, and one theme is evident: employers are prepared to make daring strikes and contemplate approaches they’d beforehand dismissed. The times of layering on new applications and hoping they drive engagement are over. Their focus now? Fewer, high-impact options that enhance worker well being and ship hard-dollar financial savings. For a lot of, which means eliminating options.

It’s exhausting, however advantages leaders shouldn’t let themselves be consumed by the hot-button points dominating the information cycle, like GLP1s, cell and gene remedy and most cancers. These are large and rising sources of spend, true, however they’re additionally sources for which it’s exhausting to regulate prices, in order that they’re not the primary place to look to bend the fee curve. Employers want a technique, however these buckets are extra about advantages tradition and well being outcomes – not lowering spend. To try this, the largest lever you may pull is the impactable price drivers, and those that soar off the web page are surgical procedure and infusions. Management these, and you chop out a ton of waste, decrease prices and enhance the worker expertise.

If you happen to’re nonetheless evaluating advantages the identical method you probably did 5 years in the past, you’re already behind. Listed below are six methods to get forward.

Fiduciary accountability

Fiduciary pressures are constructing for employers. The brand new administration has proven they wish to be aggressive on a lot of fronts, together with worth transparency, PBM reform and preventive providers. President Trump signed 76 Govt Orders in his first 100 days – greater than any sitting president since 1985. He’s concurrently growing laws whereas firing regulators, leaving many confused. Advantages leaders inform me they’re happening the offensive, stepping up their fiduciary governance, together with: committees just like these managing govt compensation; fiduciary coaching; including insurance coverage insurance policies; growing outdoors assessment even with a powerful inside workforce; and working extra vendor audits.

Much less is extra

For years, advantages groups have been pressured to extend their funding in whole rewards applications to remain aggressive. However historic development will increase are threatening that strategy. In actuality, extra choices don’t all the time translate to raised outcomes. Employers are slicing ties with options that fail to point out a hard-dollar ROI and leaning right into a “much less is extra” technique — prioritizing high quality over amount. 

Leaders are additionally prioritizing stronger advertising and communication plans to verify their individuals know what advantages can be found and learn how to use them. “We’re nice advantages leaders, however we have now to begin considering like nice entrepreneurs,” one in every of them instructed me.

Rethinking specialty care: A brand new strategy to price containment

Specialty care is 50% of an employer’s well being spend – 2x pharmacy spend and rising at a sooner price, however few have designed a specialty care technique. It’s one of many solely profit options you may implement that may impression a fraction of the inhabitants – solely about 15% will want specialty care in a given 12 months – and might ship twice the financial savings in comparison with extra disruptive adjustments like PBM or service adjustments that impression 100% of the inhabitants. Employers are more and more transferring towards supplemental specialty networks and obligatory plan designs—with backbone surgical procedure, joint alternative and bariatric procedures main the way in which. Corporations that mandate using networks of excellence are seeing $50+ per-employee, per-month financial savings whereas additionally bettering medical outcomes.

GLP1s – ought to we, or shouldn’t we?

Bariatric surgical procedure is the gold commonplace for weight reduction, however one advisor I spoke to, that we respect extremely, predicts the surgical procedure received’t exist by 2031. With 50% of People forecasted to have a BMI higher than 30 by 2030, our weight problems downside goes to worsen earlier than it will get higher.

GLP1s are dominating the dialog, however half the advantages leaders I’ve talked to this 12 months aren’t protecting them for weight reduction. Many who do aren’t thrilled about it, and who can blame them, with compliance charges round 30% after 3 months. In accordance with a current research printed in JAMA, the worth of GLP-1s must drop to $70 per week – almost a 3x price discount – simply to interrupt even with bariatric surgical procedure.

GLP1s will proceed to get higher and be authorized for extra indications, however injecting your self on a regular basis sucks. That, mixed with the unwanted effects and month-to-month price, turns into a listing of cons that may outweigh the professionals of weight reduction. Ozempic is about to grow to be a generic in 2031, however oral supply continues to be a way off. The FDA has eliminated the scarcity tag on semaglutide, so compounders aren’t supposed to have the ability to distribute (enforcement stays a query) which suggests the stress for large pharma to low cost is alleviated, at the least for now.

I’ve labored in specialty care, sleep, psychological well being and pharma, and I say this on a regular basis – conduct change is difficult; actually exhausting. The bulk on GLP1s will not be altering their behaviors – like consuming higher/much less or exercising extra. If that’s the case and also you wish to retain the burden loss, you’ve received to remain on the drug in perpetuity. And if 70% give up, nobody will see the downstream advantages like diminished cardiovascular threat, decrease A1Cs, and so forth. I feel bariatric surgical procedure is right here to remain for some time and employers ought to take a contemporary have a look at how they’re protecting these surgical procedures. Fifty p.c of our new shoppers this 12 months launched with it as a required process.

Hospitals are the actual price drivers

Pharmacy will get loads of blame, however don’t overlook the worth gouging you’re getting from some main well being techniques. Some hospitals cost 300-500% of Medicare charges, but their pricing energy stays largely unchecked. Even the nation’s greatest employers wrestle to affect main hospital techniques as a consequence of an absence of centralized inhabitants density. Employers and unions are taking a bolder stance — eradicating particular well being techniques from their networks to regulate prices and partnering with direct contract companions who can crowdsource plenty of distributed employer populations in the identical geography to wield higher negotiating energy. And if Medicaid will get lower – which is anticipated – hospitals will look to their business payers to recoup the income loss, which suggests employers will see even larger hospital costs.

Rising therapies

GLP1-s are immediately’s sizzling matter, however cell & gene remedy and CAR-T remedy are tomorrow’s. One advantages chief referred to as them “a class 5 hurricane simply offshore.” With developments in these therapies, employers can dramatically enhance well being outcomes for sufferers residing with among the most difficult-to-treat circumstances, together with genetic issues and uncommon cancers. Final 12 months, 38 CGTs had been authorized by the FDA, and that’s anticipated to develop to 50 in 2026.

Employers wish to do the correct factor and make new therapies obtainable to staff. However as a result of these groundbreaking therapies are wherever from 100 thousand as much as hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, price is an actual concern. “We’ve got an opportunity to make a huge impact, however we have now to begin getting ready now. That is the specialty pharmacy downside of 15 years in the past,” one advantages chief instructed me.

2026 is the 12 months of impression. Employers that embrace this shift is not going to solely management prices however will construct a advantages technique that really works — for each their individuals and their backside line.

Photograph: DNY59, Getty Photos

Dickon Waterfield is the President of Lantern, a Specialty Care Platform that helps employers scale back spend for surgical procedure, most cancers and infusion and enhance well being outcomes. He’s spent the final 20 years in well being care consulting and well being care start-ups and scale ups in specialty care, pharmacy, sleep and psychological well being. He lives in Connecticut along with his spouse and three children.

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