Rising Health Costs Are Coming. Here’s What Brokers Need to Do Now.

Executive Summary

Health care costs for employer plans are rising again, and many forecasts indicate even larger increases in 2026 and 2027. That means renewals will be more complex, more strategic, and higher stakes. Brokers who rely on manual workflows and spreadsheets will struggle to keep up. Firms that adopt automation and AI now will be able to protect clients, reduce errors, and scale without adding headcount.
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What the Numbers Say Right Now

Multiple industry studies and surveys indicate stronger health care cost pressure heading into 2026. Employers are predicting steep cost increases before plan design changes, with median forecasts around 9 percent for 2026, and projections remain elevated even when employers plan benefit changes. Business Group on Health

Consulting firms see similar trends. McKinsey estimates that employer healthcare costs could rise by roughly 9 to 10 percent through 2026, driven by medical inflation, specialty drugs, and rising utilization. McKinsey & Company Mercer’s research also shows employers expecting one of the largest year over year increases in recent memory, with employers estimating roughly a 9 to 10 percent rise after they implement cost management measures, and higher without changes. Mercer+1

On the household side, premiums are already climbing. KFF reports annual family premiums for employer coverage rose about 6 percent in 2025 and are approaching $27,000 per year on average. These are not small, incremental changes. They reshape employer budgets and employee expectations.

Key drivers include post-pandemic utilization catching up, rising prices for services and labor, and major new spending in specialty pharmacy, including GLP-1 weight loss and other high-cost therapies. These trends are compounding and persistent, and many forecasters expect the pressure to continue into next year.
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What This Means for Brokers, Right Now

1. ‍Renewals become high stakes. Every renewal now needs more scenarios, more carriers, and tighter QA to explain why a plan increased in cost and to present credible alternatives. That increases workload and risk.
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2. Clients demand transparency and strategy. Employers will push brokers for a clear, data-based rationale for changes, and they will want proof you shopped the market thoroughly.
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3. Operational strain grows during Q4. When rates spike, Q4 is not just busy; it is critical. Manual errors or missed variances can damage relationships and cost businesses.
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4. Margin and retention pressure rise. Employers will look for creative funding and plan design to manage costs, creating an opportunity for brokers to surface those strategies quickly and accurately.

Bottom line: rising costs make accuracy, speed, and repeatable processes more valuable than ever.

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What 2026 Could Look Like if You Don’t Act

• More requests for “what if” scenarios from HR and finance teams, with little time to model them manually.
  
  
• Increased client churn for brokers that cannot quickly demonstrate market options and validated comparisons.
  
  
• Higher error rates from teams under volume pressure, leading to costly remediation or lost credibility.
  
  
• A continued squeeze on margins and more pressure to offer alternative funding strategies or change benefit designs.
  
  

How Plansight Helps Now, and How it Protects You in 2026

We built Plansight for this exact moment: a market where speed, accuracy, and repeatability matter as much as relationships.

1. Faster, smarter quote intake and comparison
   Upload carrier proposals in PDF, Excel, or CSV, and PlansightAI reads and normalizes the data automatically. No more rekeying dozens of values into complex Excel workbooks. That saves hours per renewal and reduces the chance of human error.
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2. Built-in QA and variance detection
   Plansight flags inconsistencies and highlights variance so your team can focus on the few items that truly need human review. That reduces the risk of a bad number reaching a client meeting.
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3. Scenario modeling at scale
   Run “what if” scenarios quickly across multiple carriers and plan designs. When HR or finance asks about changing contributions or shifting costs to employees, you can show the impact in minutes, not days.
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4. Presentations that build trust
   Plansight automatically generates branded, client-ready deliverables, so you can present clean, auditable comparisons that show you shopped the market and validated the math.
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5. A platform that learns and scales
   As you use Plansight, templates, prebuilt designs, and AI models adapt to the carriers and client types you work with, compounding efficiency year over year. That is how you protect margins while serving more clients.
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What Brokers Should Do in the Next 90 Days

1. Audit your renewal workflow. Identify where manual copy-paste and spreadsheet handoffs create risk. Take note of those, and meet with a Plansight specialist to discuss how Plansight can help your workflow.
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2. ‍Prioritize automation for high-volume tasks. Start with quote intake and side-by-side comparisons.
   
   
3. Build a QA checklist that includes AI verification. Human oversight remains essential, but automated checks catch the routine problems.
   
   
4. Model staffing versus automation ROI. You can serve more clients without adding headcount by removing manual bottlenecks.
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5. Plan for Q1 implementation. If you want to avoid the next Q4 scramble, start pilots and training in Q1 so your team is ready before the next renewal season.
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Final Thought: Rising Costs Force Choices, and Choices Create Winners

Rising health prices are not neutral; they accelerate change. Brokers who respond by doubling down on manual processes will suffer more churn and stress. Brokers who adopt automation and smarter workflows will win trust, protect margins, and scale their businesses without the all-night scrambles.

If you want a practical, low-friction way to start, we are running discovery sessions to model what the next renewal season could look like for your book. In 15 minutes, we can show where your team is losing hours during renewals and how much time Plansight could give back to them next year.

Schedule a discovery call to see a brief demo.

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