The cost of employer-sponsored health care in the US is expected to increase by 9.0 percent in 2025, bringing the average expense per employee to over $16,000, according to Aon, a global professional services firm.
This expected rise assumes that employers won’t introduce additional cost-sharing or other savings measures.
It marks a larger jump compared to the 6.4 percent increase observed between 2023 and 2024, which already factored in cost-saving strategies.
Farheen Dam, North American Health Solutions leader at Aon, commented: “We are at a pivotal time in helping employers think about balancing the costs of GLP-1 prescription drugs with the opportunity they provide to treat obesity and reduce the chronic conditions associated with this disease.
“It’s imperative that employers consider the clinical evidence and health benefits as well as the near-term cost impacts.”
For 2024, the average projected health-plan cost per employee stands at $14,823. The data comes from Aon’s Health Value Initiative, which includes information from more than 950 US employers and covers around 6.7 million workers.
Medical claims are consistently high, and prescription drug costs continue to grow, mainly due to the increasing use of specialty drugs and a rise in prescriptions for GLP-1 medications used to treat diabetes and obesity.
Debbie Ashford, Chief Actuary for Health Solutions, Aon, said: “In the health care sector, both rising employment levels and wage increases fueled by economy-wide inflation during the past few years are pushing health care costs higher. To keep pace with these pressures, the health care industry negotiates higher prices, which in turn emerge as higher medical trends.
“On the prescription drug side, specialty drugs remain the leading factor in spending, even though they represent a small fraction of overall utilisation. The demand for GLP-1 medications has skyrocketed, and a surge in news drugs in the GLP-1 category is expected to drive up costs even further, adding 1 percent to the aggregate health care cost increase.”
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