Healthcare prices have been a key problem for employers in 2025, and that is solely anticipated to proceed in 2026, in accordance with Morgan Well being CEO Dan Mendelson.
Morgan Well being is a JPMorgan Chase enterprise unit targeted on employer-sponsored insurance coverage. Mendelson lately launched his high developments to observe in 2026 for employer-sponsored medical insurance, and the way its portfolio firms are supporting these developments:
1. Affordability is a high concern: This is applicable to shoppers, small companies and enormous firms. In response to the Enterprise Group on Well being, employers undertaking a median 9% enhance in healthcare prices subsequent yr.
“It’s a tough time for them to soak up these will increase, particularly given normal inflation,” Mendelson stated in an interview. “Employers, I feel, particularly, are taking a look at 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 tackle these rising prices, together with most cancers care firm Thyme Care and different well being plan Centivo.
2. Drug prices: As new medicine emerge, managing prices fastidiously is important. Employers have to replace how they deal with threat and supply medical steering to make sure sufferers can entry progressive therapies with out overspending, particularly as dearer medicines turn out to be accessible. GLP-1 prices may also proceed to catch the attention of employers.
Morgan Well being portfolio firms addressing excessive drug prices embrace Aradigm, which is concentrated on cell and gene therapies, and Thyme Look after most cancers medicine.
3. Superior analytics: Leveraging superior analytics is important 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 embrace 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 assist: 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, in accordance with Mendelson, and the corporate is an investor in Venteur, which affords ICHRA options for small companies. ICHRAs (Particular person Protection Well being Reimbursement Preparations) permit employers to supply their staff pre-tax {dollars} to buy medical 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 usually not as sturdy as what massive companies can entry,” Mendelson stated.
5. A shift towards consumer-focused care: Folks need extra management and assist of their healthcare selections, which firms like Personify Well being and Fuze Well being tackle, in accordance with Mendelson. The latter brings care into sufferers’ houses.
“Customers have turn out to be accustomed to having a powerful degree of knowledge in all different domains: in buying, going surfing to seek out items for family members throughout the holidays; in banking, seeing your data,” he stated. “In healthcare, shoppers haven’t been given a number of energy up till comparatively lately, and a number of the facility that buyers have is coming from AI. … The shift that we anticipate over the following couple of years is that shopper well being advantages are going to more and more be capable of empower folks to make good well being care selections, and a part of it’s getting data to shoppers inside their very own workflow.”
Photograph: MicroStockHub, Getty Photographs
