Inflationary pressure in healthcare is no longer an abstract idea. It’s a major problem that comes with a precise number. $26,993 is the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage in 2025, reflecting a painful 6% year-on-year surge. This increase, driven by rebounding utilization, high-cost therapies (like GLP-1 drugs), and labor inflation, is squeezing budgets and threatening talent retention, with workers now contributing an average of $6,850 annually.

In this article, we’ll examine what this dramatic rise in costs means for employers, insurers, and providers, offer guidance on how industry decision makers can address the issue, and how digital health platforms like dacadoo’s DHEP offer a proven way forward. 

Key Takeaways

• With workers paying an average of $6,850 on health insurance in 2025, this is outpacing both rises in wages and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

• While causes of this surge in inflation include care backlogs and labor costs, many large employers cite pharmacy spend as a top pressure.

• Without intervention, commercial costs are projected to grow by a crippling 9–10% annually through 2026.

• The path to cost reduction in healthcare requires a coordinated strategy of targeted prevention, treatment adherence, smart care guidance, and transparent reporting. dacadoo’s DHEP combines all of these.

A compounding crisis that needs to be confronted

According to McKinsey, commercial healthcare costs are expected to rise by 9–10% in 2026. More than just a grim projection, it’s an unsustainable trajectory that will swamp even the largest corporate budgets within 12-18 months, forcing difficult decisions to be made across the entire healthcare system.

For employers, the risk is a competitive one. Trying to solve this dramatic increase by cost-shifting or benefit cuts will inevitably lead to rapid talent attrition. As the LIMRA–EY 2025 study points out, the battle for top talent requires a delicate balance of affordability and employee value.

Meanwhile, health and life insurers face immediate margin risk as skyrocketing use and mounting Medical Loss Ratios (MLR) directly threaten profitability and customer retention. This mounting pressure is now challenging the viability of their current business models.

Relying on an austerity playbook is unlikely to work in these circumstances. Benefit cuts, high deductibles, and exclusions carry major policy and health risks. This approach increases member friction, drives care avoidance, and ultimately worsens long-term chronic disease costs, trading short-term relief for long-term instability.

What’s actually causing the spike

To solve the healthcare cost crisis, organizations need to focus on the primary budget threats that are driving the current surge.

Utilization rebound (the chronic backlog): The post-pandemic return to care, coupled with a growing backlog of untreated or poorly managed chronic conditions, is driving up the frequency and intensity of claims. People are finally seeking the care they delayed, often at a higher and more expensive acuity.

Pharmacy impact (GLP-1 cost): The strong uptake and persistence of high-cost GLP-1 medications for weight management and diabetes are fundamentally reshaping pharmacy budgets. The sheer cost and the number of lives impacted mean employers are being forced to choose between offering a valuable, necessary benefit and maintaining financial stability.

Service & labor inflation: Wage inflation for clinical and support staff is flowing directly through hospital and clinic contracts. These increased service and labor costs are baked into renewal rates, resulting in unprecedented rate hikes across the industry.

Immediate, targeted actions by segment

The solution to all this won’t be found by simply adjusting plan benefits or negotiating new contracts. Success requires a strategic shift toward an engagement-driven operational model.

For employers (CFO, CHRO, benefits)

Pair GLP-1 coverage with digital coaching:  Don’t just cover the drug. Mandate, or at the very least, strongly incentivize participation in digital coaching (nutrition, activity, mental wellbeing) alongside GLP-1 therapy. This will ensure adherence, maximize therapeutic success, and provide essential outcomes data to justify the investment before the next renewal cycle.

Direct members to high-value care: Promote virtual and primary care as the first point of contact to reduce unnecessary and expensive emergency room visits and acute admissions

Measure business ROI:  Move beyond simple premium costs. Implement systems to measure the wider impact of health on the bottom line, quantifying reductions in absenteeism and presenteeism to show a clear return on investment.

For insurers (health & life)

Preventable use reduction: Use digital engagement to reduce lifestyle risk and mental health issues, lowering avoidable claims. Focus on improving medication adherence for all chronic conditions and feed these positive results into underwriting, pricing, and utilization management (UM).

Pharmacy strategy & digital pathways: Implement strict eligibility and step-therapy protocols for GLP-1s. Of equal importance, provide powerful digital weight-management pathways to help members succeed outside of medication reliance.

Protect renewals with data: Equip your sales and account teams with employer-facing outcomes dashboards that quantify improvements in health risk, protect renewals, and defend margin targets.

For providers/health systems

Extend care management: Use digital journeys to manage patients between visits, reducing no-shows and preventing complications that lead to readmissions.

Standardize protocols: Use digital nudges and reminders for pre-visit prep and post-procedure recovery to compress Length of Stay (LOS) and reduce the cost of readmissions.

Support value-based care: Use engagement and health-risk data to deliver more meaningful metrics, improve patient outcomes, and strengthen your position in value-based care contracts and payer negotiations.

How dacadoo’s DHEP helps put these plans into operation

dacadoo’s Digital Health Engagement Platform (DHEP) is the execution layer that turns prevention, adherence, and steerage into measurable financial impact.

Prevention & behavior change at scale: The platform uses behavioral science, gamified challenges, and micro-nudges to create habit loops that drive sustained improvements in activity, nutrition, sleep, and mental health—the foundation for lowering avoidable healthcare use.

Adherence & condition pathways: Our DHEP provides structured, guided journeys for chronic and high-cost conditions such as weight, cardiometabolic, and mental health. It delivers reminders and tracks progress to make sure patients maximize outcomes from high-cost therapies, including GLP-1s.

Population risk insights: The dacadoo Health Score quantify an individual’s health status in a single, actionable number, allowing employers and insurers to segment, prioritize outreach, and track improvement across cohorts.

Care navigation & steerage: The DHEP acts as an intelligent digital front door, guiding users to appropriate and efficient care settings (virtual care, specialized primary care) and helping to reduce the use of high-cost services like the ED.

Outcomes reporting (CFO-ready): Importantly, the platform provides transparent, auditable dashboards that quantify changes in use and engagement KPIs, delivering the visible ROI needed by decision-makers.

More than just words

Highlighting the selling points of a health platform in a blog is one thing, but undergoing rigorous independent scientific analysis is something else. A real-world study conducted by the University of Groningen in conjunction with a Dutch insurer confirmed that frequent, sustained use of the dacadoo app delivers a reliable 5% reduction in basic healthcare costs.

In short, the engagement that dacadoo’s DHEP delivers is the scientifically-proven basis for a viable financial strategy in healthcare.

Closing the cost gap with dacadoo

$26,993 is not just an uncomfortable number. It’s a new high-water mark for healthcare costs. When you factor in the projected 9–10% growth in these costs, healthcare businesses need a fast and effective way to combat the fallout before the 2026 renewals.

dacadoo’s award-winning DHEP offers a quick and fully scalable solution that significantly reduces healthcare costs by making every member an active participant in their own health journey. Engagement is key to this and exactly what dacadoo brings to the health equation. It may seem patently obvious that adopting a healthy lifestyle improves health outcomes and reduces health costs. But why then do so few people pursue the journey successfully?

With dacadoo, your members stay reliably on the path to better health and lower health costs. It’s not just better for them but for the entire healthcare industry. To discover for yourself how dacadoo’s DHEP can improve health engagement in your population, book a demo and receive the independent study summary.