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Thursday, 12 February 2026 |
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| A few weeks back, I moderated a dinner conversation among company heads of HR and benefits here in Denver organized by primary care operator Marathon Health. |
| These employee benefit leaders are a group I hear about a lot. Every entrepreneur in health tech is either selling to employers, pivoting away from selling to employers, or trying to crack into the market as an alternative to selling to consumers. |
| I wanted to ask them what it's going to take for healthcare costs to come down. After all, they're the ones who oversee their companies' spending, and employer healthcare costs are up an estimated 9.5% in 2026, according to Aon, up from 9.2% in 2025 and 8.5% in 2024. |
| Here are some of the takeaways I came away with: |
- When asked for one word to describe the state of healthcare today, the answers were "misaligned," "dysfunctional," "scrambled" and "conflicting." (My uncontroversial contribution was "expensive.")
- One thing that surprised me was that benefits leaders are seeing a lot of skepticism from employees to actually use the benefits they’re provided. For some, a sizable portion of their employees are using online direct-to-consumer care sites, instead of seeing a provider and getting their prescription through insurance.
- When I brought up GLP-1s, there was an audible groan. Very few around the table offered GLP-1s for weight loss coverage, and those that did warned the others about how expensive it can get. One called the medications “bankrupting expensive,” noting their costs doubled every six months. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more constriction of employer coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss in 2026 because of this.
- The benefits leaders reminded me of what’s at stake for their employees: People are working beyond retirement age because they can’t afford healthcare.
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| As a reporter who herself has health benefits through her employer, it felt like I was getting a peek behind the scenes into what’s on the minds of the decision-makers responsible for a significant portion of the US population’s healthcare coverage. I got the sense that there’s more willingness than in the past to shake things up,
especially when it comes to prescription drug costs. |
| - Lydia |
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Diving into health tech policy |
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Shelby’s at the ASTP Annual Meeting this week in Washington, DC, where she’s learning about all things interoperability. This morning, she tuned into a session with top Trump health official Amy Gleason and Tom Keane, national coordinator for health information technology. If you see Shelby around, say hi! |
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This week in health Тech |
Three companies announced $100 million+ funding rounds this week:
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Worldwide made. Thanks for reading.
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