You’ve done everything you were supposed to do. Raised the deductible. Shopped the plan. Shifted more premium to employees. Sat through the broker presentation and made the hard call.
And the number still went up.
What’s worse, you are worried that your people are feeling it. That the coverage that used to feel like something you were proud to offer has become something that’s not quite so valuable, or even that upsets employees that are used to better benefits. That’s not a comfortable place for a leader who actually cares.
The Standard Playbook Is Making It Worse
The challenge is that when you raise the deductible to control costs, employees don’t respond by making smarter healthcare choices. They typically respond by skipping care they can’t afford. The preventive visit. The prescription they’re rationing. The symptom they’ve decided to wait out.
Those delayed decisions don’t disappear. They compound. A manageable condition becomes an expensive one. A screening that would have caught something early gets skipped until it can’t be ignored anymore. And when it finally surfaces, it surfaces as a claim. The kind that shows up in your next renewal as a Double-digit increase.
Raising the deductible is a financial transfer, not a fix. You moved the cost from your premium line to your employees’ wallets and set up the conditions for bigger claims down the road. The 2025 KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey puts the average family premium for employers your size at $26,054, up 53% since 2020. Deductibles went up across that same period. So did premiums. That’s not a coincidence.
Your People Are Doing the Math
And a lot of them are losing.
The employees most likely to defer care under a high-deductible plan are not the ones gaming the system. They’re the hourly workers. The solid mid-level managers. The people who are good at their jobs and stretched thin. They look at a $4,000 deductible and make a completely rational decision: they wait. They figure they’ll deal with it later.
Later is where your claims come from.
And while that’s playing out, your best people, the ones with options in this market, are quietly doing a different kind of math. They’re comparing what you offer to what the company down the street is offering. They won’t bring it up in their exit interview. They’ll say something about growth. But benefits erosion is one of the most consistent predictors of voluntary attrition that never gets its own line in the turnover analysis.
There’s a Tool Most CFOs Don’t Know They’re Missing
Supplemental benefits, specifically accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity coverage, are built to address exactly what’s described above. They sit alongside your major medical plan. When a covered health event happens, a hospital stay, an accident, a serious diagnosis, they pay cash directly to the employee. No receipts. No approval process. The money goes to the employee to use however they need: the deductible, the copay, the two weeks of income they lost while recovering.
That cash cushion changes the decision your employee makes when they’re sitting on an early symptom. If they know that there are financial resources available, they’re more likely to get the test, see the specialist, follow through on the thing their doctor flagged six months ago. Earlier care means lower-cost outcomes. Lower-cost outcomes mean a better claims picture at renewal.
That’s the mechanism. It’s not complicated. It just doesn’t come up in most renewal conversations.
Here’s what makes it especially interesting from where you sit: supplemental benefits are typically employee-funded or very low cost to the employer. You get a tool that reduces downstream claims exposure, adds genuine perceived value to your benefits package, and gives employees something real when they need it most. At a cost that doesn’t move your budget. That combination is unusual in benefits design.
So Why Hasn’t Your Broker Brought This Up?
Probably because the broker system rewards renewal management, not strategy. Your broker’s job is to find you the best available plan at the best available price. That’s genuinely valuable work. It’s just not the same as asking whether a different approach entirely might change your trajectory.
Supplemental benefits tend to show up as optional enrollment add-ons, if they show up at all. They rarely get introduced as a claims management strategy. If nobody has framed it that way for you, that’s a gap worth closing before your next renewal.
Before Your Next Renewal
A few questions worth putting on the table:
– What specifically drove our claims increase, and what can realistically move that number?
– Do we have supplemental benefits in place? Are employees actually using them?
– Could a supplemental layer reduce the financial pressure that’s causing our people to defer care?
– What would our claims picture need to look like to qualify for self-insurance, and how do we get there?
The premium increase isn’t inevitable. It just looks that way when the only tool in the conversation is the deductible lever. There’s a better conversation to be having, and it’s worth having it now, before renewal season puts everyone back in reactive mode.
John Gies works with mid-sized employers and the advisors who serve them on benefits strategy, workforce retention, and business growth. He is the founder of Resonant Business Solutions LLC, based in Denver, Colorado.
