Employee Benefit News November 18, 2024
It shouldn’t come as a shock that healthcare costs are expected to increase in 2025 — but that doesn’t mean employers aren’t prepared to mitigate the damage.
After surveying 1,800 employers, financial services company Mercer estimates that employees will have to cover an additional 5.8% of their healthcare benefit costs in 2025, making it the third consecutive year of cost increases over the 5% mark. In other words, employers are already planning on pushing added healthcare costs to employees, potentially dissuading workers from seeking care.
“We’re in this vicious cycle where costs are rising, [employers] are shifting them to the worker, which prevents them from getting care or accessing the system, which leads to longer-term, worse healthcare needs,” says...