Healthcare prices have been a key problem for employers in 2025, and that is solely anticipated to proceed in 2026, based on Morgan Well being CEO Dan Mendelson.
Morgan Well being is a JPMorgan Chase enterprise unit targeted on employer-sponsored insurance coverage. Mendelson just lately launched his prime developments to look at in 2026 for employer-sponsored medical health insurance, and the way its portfolio firms are supporting these developments:
1. Affordability is a prime concern: This is applicable to customers, small companies and huge firms. In response to the Enterprise Group on Well being, employers undertaking a median 9% enhance in healthcare prices subsequent 12 months.
“It’s a tough time for them to soak up these will increase, particularly given common inflation,” Mendelson mentioned in an interview. “Employers, I believe, particularly, are what they’re paying for healthcare and saying it’s acquired to be higher than this, as a result of the prices preserve going up, and it looks as if the healthcare supply system continues to deteriorate.”
Morgan Well being is an investor in a number of digital well being firms that deal with these rising prices, together with most cancers care firm Thyme Care and various well being plan Centivo.
2. Drug prices: As new medication emerge, managing prices fastidiously is crucial. Employers must replace how they deal with threat and supply medical steerage to make sure sufferers can entry revolutionary remedies with out overspending, particularly as dearer medicines change into accessible. GLP-1 prices can even proceed to be a magnet for employers.
Morgan Well being portfolio firms addressing excessive drug prices embody Aradigm, which is targeted on cell and gene therapies, and Thyme Look after most cancers medication.
3. Superior analytics: Leveraging superior analytics is crucial to offering higher-quality care, and AI will proceed to make waves in administrative and medical settings. Morgan Well being portfolio firms that deal with these areas embody Merative, which curates knowledge for employers, and Personify Well being, which makes use of AI to personalize take care of sufferers.
4. Small companies want help: Small and mid-sized companies are anticipated to face double-digit premium will increase. It is a group that Morgan Well being is especially targeted on supporting, based on Mendelson, and the corporate is an investor in Venteur, which affords ICHRA options for small companies. ICHRAs (Particular person Protection Well being Reimbursement Preparations) enable employers to supply their staff pre-tax {dollars} to buy medical health insurance.
“Anyone who has ever run a small enterprise has struggled with the price of offering protection for employees, and the merchandise that small companies are being provided are typically not as robust as what giant companies can entry,” Mendelson mentioned.
5. A shift towards consumer-focused care: Individuals need extra management and help of their healthcare choices, which firms like Personify Well being and Fuze Well being deal with, based on Mendelson. The latter brings care into sufferers’ properties.
“Shoppers have change into accustomed to having a robust stage of knowledge in all different domains: in buying, going surfing to search out presents for family members in the course of the holidays; in banking, seeing your info,” he mentioned. “In healthcare, customers haven’t been given lots of energy up till comparatively just lately, and lots of the facility that buyers have is coming from AI. … The shift that we anticipate over the subsequent couple of years is that shopper well being advantages are going to more and more be capable to empower folks to make good well being care choices, and a part of it’s getting info to customers inside their very own workflow.”
Photograph: MicroStockHub, Getty Pictures
