The real reasons employee <a href="https://healthylife7.com/mash-camps-fuel-high-school-students-interest-in-healthcare/” title=”MASH Camps Fuel High School Students’ Interest in Healthcare”>healthcare costs are rising
Yahoo Finance Video and Julie Hyman
Fri, August 21, 2026 at 10:30 PM GMT+5:30
Market Catalyst Host Julie Hyman welcomes Society for Human Reiving employee healthcare costs, which are on track to rise 6.7% this year, and the three key reasons behind the increase
00:00Speaker A
we are seeing big increases in what people, even people who have workplace coverage are expected to pay that it’s going to go up $388 this year. How is that sort of rippling across the the human re
00:16Speaker B
Gosh, well, it starts with wage inflation. People therefore want more money from their employer. You know, if their expenses increase, specifically those around health and welfare benefits and they have to pay more out of their paycheck, they’re asking us to increase their paychecks. And so that is specifically putting a lot of pressure on HR departments when you have to go into the CEO, CFO and say, we need to increase uh our employees’ payroll just because they need to cover these rising healthcare costs.
00:46Speaker A
And I’m curious specifically, the inputs, I mean, we know that healthcare costs have been persistent. I’m curious specifically what’s changing around GLP1s. Is some of the increase in costs having to do with GLP1s? And this is something I’ve talked with health insurers about before. It’s tricky to okay, you’re paying this cost, but maybe you won’t be paying costs down the road with some of the comorbidities. But how is the GLP1 effect hitting um this health benefit story?
01:22Speaker B
Well, so, the fact of the matter is a lot of folks uh jumped on it to go, and I’m going to be a little cute about it, but to go from a size four dress to a two or a size 30 waist to a 28 as a guy. Like in other words, they weren’t doing this for uh purely medical reasons. I mean, many of much of it was for aesthetic reasons, and it became sort of the debate over whether or not use and and coverage of these uh prescriptions were more like an elective than required. And so we started seeing a significant uptick now about three or four years ago to the point now that it’s specifically impacting overall spend. So for the first time, we’re seeing employers spend about 18,500 per person per year on healthcare costs. and that is driven largely, not exclusively, but largely by GLP adoption. That’s a really, really big number. Now, there are two other factors that are really important to factor into why we’re seeing cost increase. One, Americans are getting older.
02:23Speaker B
Our workforce is getting older. And so for the first time, the average age of the median age, I should say, of the US worker is now 42 years old. Two decades ago, that number was 40. And while it sounds like just two years is a small number, it’s significant because your healthcare costs rise as your workforce ages. And then secondly, mental health
02:44Speaker B
So yes, GLP1s are important and they’re leading to this increase in healthcare uh costs, but also too is an older uh an older worker and also mental health cost
