Is Your Benefits Strategy Inflation-Proof?

This past fall, a group of founders had the opportunity to meet with Inspired Capital leadership and a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce for a macro discussion oriented about preparing us for what was ahead. At the time, gas prices were not yet cripplingly high and while inflation was inching up, it wasn’t yet at the forefront of the national zeitgeist. In the list of send-ahead questions, one founder asked, “Who will be our generation’s Paul Volcker?”??

In a Zoom room with quite a few younger founders, I felt my age and overly paranoid asking about inflation — the long-dead boogeyman from my dad’s generation.? But inflation has come back from the grave with a vengeance, silently stealing dollars out of hard-working people’s purses, pockets, and wallets in the quiet of the night.???

In the months since that conversation, many of the far-sighted concerns have come to life and I wrote this article to sound the alarm for our clients.?

Business and benefits leaders should be aware that four factors are coming together in a way we’ve never seen before.

1. The highest need for healthcare ever. People have put off care for two years— for instance, monthly screenings for colorectal cancer were down by nearly 18% in 2021 compared with pre pandemic volumes— and folks can’t hold off anymore.
2. The highest healthcare prices ever. Hospitals and their employees selflessly provided for us the last two years and many, frankly, were taken advantage of by bad actor staffing agencies and links in the supply chain who were profiteering off the pandemic. For hospitals that operate on razor-thin margins, those incurred costs have to be reimbursed in order to maintain sustainability for society’s needs. Those costs will roll, through insurers, back to employers.
3. Employers will seek savings from their health plans. Employers have been unable to make health plan design changes for two years, and they now face recessionary headwinds. As a result, they are actively looking for significant, easily implemented, and highly reliable sources of savings.?
4. Employees will be in the worst ever position to afford the highest prices ever. With the CPI now up 9.1% vs. June 2021, the average worker who earns $50,000 now has $4,550 less available for out-of-pocket medical expenses.

This is coming— in fact, it’s already here.

Benefits leaders should be looking for solutions that mitigate deferred care by solving the pain in people’s pockets. We believe our role in providing employer-sponsored & interest-free Care Payment Cards that sit alongside personal HSA’s or FSA’s can fill in any harmful voids in plan deductibles and cost-effectively improve and ensure equal access to healthcare across teams.

If you’re a business or benefit leader, I’d love to hear how you’re coping with this. And if there’s anything we can do to help, I’d love to connect.