Worth Reading – The main reason your company’s healthcare costs are skyrocketing
Well, isn’t this quite the conundrum:
What CFOs are now confronting is a tipping point where the average total cost to insure an employee is nearing $20,000 annually. Notably, it is specifically mental health claims that are driving the spike. PwC’s 2026 Medical Trend report shows that inpatient mental health claims have jumped a staggering 80% in the last 24 months.
For years, the corporate world has treated employee mental health as an imported problem—personal struggles that people bring with them into the workplace. But the evidence is now irrefutable that how employers manage their employees is having the greater impact and is often the leading driver of the strain. To be very clear, the way we work today has become a primary manufacturer of incremental stress, burnout, and mental health decline.
So, what you’re telling me is that one of the reasons healthcare costs have risen so much recently is due to mental health claims, not to mention the physical manifestation of health issues related to mental health issues, and that those same issues are being caused by work?
Here’s the interesting thing. When workplaces have made people ill, we’ve done little to hold them accountable. We have done some things, though. (Asbestos lawsuits, for example.) It hasn’t amounted to much in the broader context, but we do acknowledge that working in an environment that causes health issues is generally frowned upon. We have not reached that point with mental health. We’ve not started thinking about the poor health outcomes for people pushed to the brink and beyond by their managers.
We should, and businesses should be leading the charge, because this is costing them a ton in health insurance premiums.
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