How HSAs can help organizations stave off $183B in lost productivity

• Key Insight: Learn why rising healthcare costs are translating into measurable workplace productivity loss.
• What's at Stake: Persistent care avoidance threatens retention, output, and long-term workforce health risk.
• Forward Look: Expect higher HSA adoption and ongoing benefits education to reduce care avoidance.
• Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

Increasing healthcare rates aren't just costing employees financially, but their organizations are losing productivity.

Nearly half of employed Americans say they are more financially worried today than they were six months ago, according to a recent survey of employed Americans conducted by health tech company HealthEquity, contributing to an estimated $183 billion in annual productivity losses for U.S. employers. Rising healthcare costs are fueling that anxiety, leading employees across industries to postpone or skip needed care to save money. Better-designed benefits can help ease those financial pressures while improving access to care.

"This is not random, it's structural," said Tene Raymond, director of life cycle marketing at HealthEquity. "The system is failing people who actually need it and what makes this more concerning is the level of disconnect underneath it all."

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Thirty-six percent of HealthEquity's respondents said they had delayed medical care, most commonly skipping specialist visits, prescription medications, and diagnostic tests — services that are critical for early detection and managing ongoing health conditions, Raymond said. Delayed care was especially common among people with chronic conditions, with 44% reporting they had postponed treatment, compared to 25% of those without chronic illnesses. Financial barriers also played a major role, as 46% of respondents earning less than $50,000 a year delayed or avoided care.

Among those putting off seeking medical help, young workers are the biggest contributors. Forty-five percent of Gen Z and 42% of millennials are delaying care at significantly higher rates than Gen X (30%) or boomers (29%). As a result, the younger generations are four times more likely than boomers to report being highly distracted at work, which spells a long-term problem if it goes unaddressed. 

"It's not about aging out of the healthcare system that's the problem, it's aging into it," Raymond said. "Young generations are navigating a set of financial pressures that are genuinely compounding like student debt, housing costs, economic uncertainty, and now healthcare affordability. They're also earlier in their careers, meaning lower incomes and less financial cushion to fall back on."

Adding HSAs to plan designs

The solution to much of the disconnect between people of all ages and costs is access to tools to help them absorb some of the cost — a pain point that access to a health savings account (HSA) can potentially solve. According to HealthEquity, nearly nine in 10 HSA holders say they feel more prepared, confident, and in control of paying for medical expenses. Employees contributing to an HSA also tend to have a stronger understanding of their benefits, with 72% reporting high benefits literacy versus 64% of those without an HSA. According to Raymond, these findings are a clear indicator that HSAs are an effective tool, not a niche benefit. 

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"Now is the time for healthcare readiness to receive the same level of attention we give to other benefit designs," Raymond said. "There is now clearly a rising amount of urgency behind it, and that's a call out for multiple parties, including benefits leaders."

Raymond urges leaders to start with improving communication. Surveying employees about their current healthcare needs and understanding and using that data to make benefit decisions is crucial to putting good solutions in place. 

"Stop treating benefits like a one-time open enrollment conversation," Raymond said. "This sum of productivity loss is not an abstract number, it's showing up in the workforce every single day in focus, in output, in retention, and employers who are going to win are the ones who actually treat education benefits like it's an ongoing investment, not just an annual check box."