Continued healthcare cost increases are looking more like a feature than a bug.
Next year, health costs for U.S. employers can expect to see their health-related costs tick up by 9.5%, which equates to an average of about $19,000 per employee, according to projections released last week by professional services firm Aon.
One important caveat: Those projections don’t take into account cost-management strategies that employers typically use. Still, even with such measures in place, costs are likely to increase. Consider the fact that from 2025 to 2026, employers saw an 8.8% uptick in health plan costs after deploying cost-management measures, per Aon’s research. Employers also footed the bill for about 82.2% of their health plan’s cost this year, up from 81.8% in 2025.
The prognosis hasn’t looked much better for employees, who endured a 7.9% increase in healthcare costs in the form of higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
Aon arrived at its projections via its database of health care costs and benefit plans for more than 1,100 U.S. employers.
What’s driving all the cost increases? In an email to CFO.com, Aon’s North America Health Solutions Lead Mike Pasterick pointed to the rise of specialty medications and GLP-1 therapies, such as the weight-loss drug Ozempic. But that’s not all.
“Rising health care costs are also being fueled by higher utilization, chronic disease prevalence, growth in high-cost claims and increased spending in physician and outpatient care,” he said. “We are also seeing pressure from ongoing provider consolidation and more intensive clinical coding practices. Together, these trends are contributing to a sustained period of elevated cost growth.”
These trends are compelling CFOs and their teams to get more involved in health benefits decisions than they were in the past, Pasterick noted.
“Historically, health benefits decisions were led primarily by HR and benefits teams,” he said. “Today, we're seeing much greater involvement from CFOs and finance leaders because health care spend represents one of the largest and fastest-growing people-related investments for many organizations.”
That involvement could include more participation in talks about benefits strategy, risk management and vendors or networks.
But there’s only so much business leaders can do.
“Most of the underlying drivers of health care inflation are external to employers, whether it's provider pricing, specialty drug costs, workforce health trends or broader utilization patterns,” Pasterick said. “Employers generally have limited ability to directly influence those factors.”
Pasterick recommended that CFOs continue to team up with their HR colleagues on cost targets. Finance chiefs also can look “beyond trend numbers” and ask specifically where costs are rising.
“Organizations that combine strong data, analytics and planning are generally better positioned to make informed decisions as the health care landscape continues to evolve,” he said, though he noted that “sustained health care cost growth is likely to remain a business challenge, not a one-year anomaly.”
