Morgan Health: 5 predictions for employer-sponsored insurance in 2026
Morgan Health CEO Dan Mendelson said health care costs have been a major challenge for employers through 2025 and are expected to only continue into 2026.
Morgan Health is a business unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. focused on employer-sponsored insurance. Mendelson recently released the top trends of focus for employer-sponsored health insurance in 2026 and how its portfolio companies can support them:
1. Affordability is the top concern: This applies to consumers, small businesses, and large corporations. Employers expect median health care costs to increase 9% next year, according to the Health Business Group.
“This is a very difficult time for them to digest these increases, especially given general inflation,” Mendelson said in an interview. “I think employers in particular are looking at what they're paying for health care and saying it has to be better than that because costs are rising and the health care delivery system seems to continue to deteriorate.”
Morgan Health is an investor in several digital health companies working to address these rising costs, including cancer care company Thyme Care and alternative health plan Centivo.
2. Drug costs: As new medicines become available, careful management of costs is critical. Employers need to update how they deal with risk and provide clinical guidance to ensure patients have access to innovative treatments without overspending, particularly as more expensive drugs become available. GLP-1 costs will also continue to be a focus for employers.
Morgan Health's portfolio companies addressing high drug costs include Aradigm, which focuses on cell and gene therapies, and Thyme Care, which targets cancer drugs.
3. Advanced analysis: Leveraging advanced analytics is critical to delivering higher quality care, and artificial intelligence will continue to make waves in administrative and clinical settings. Morgan Health portfolio companies address problems in these areas, including Merative, which organizes data for employers, and Personify Health, which uses artificial intelligence to provide personalized care for patients.
4. Small businesses need support: Small and medium-sized enterprises are expected to face double-digit premium increases. Mendelson said this is one group that Morgan Health is particularly focused on supporting, and the company is an investor in Venteur, which provides ICHRA solutions to small businesses. ICHRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement) allows employers to provide employees with pre-tax funds to purchase health insurance.
“Anyone who has ever run a small business has struggled with the cost of insuring workers, and the products small businesses offer are often not as robust as what larger businesses can offer,” Mendelson said.
5. Shift to consumer-centered care: People want more control and support in their health care decisions, Mendelson said, and companies like Personify Health and Fuze Health address that. The latter brings care into patients’ homes.
“Consumers have become accustomed to having a wealth of information in all other areas: when shopping, going online during the holidays to find gifts for loved ones; in banking, looking at your information,” he said. “In health care, until recently, consumers have been given a lot of power, and a lot of the power that consumers have comes from artificial intelligence. … What we expect to see in the next few years is that the shift in consumer health benefits will be to increasingly help people make good health care decisions, and part of that is providing information to consumers within their own workflows.”
Photo: MicroStockHub, Getty Images
