How to lift the burden of healthcare navigation off benefit leaders

• Key Insight: The real reason employees are recasting HR leaders as their healthcare plan providers.
• What's at Stake: Overwhelmed HR teams facing decision fatigue while trying to manage soaring healthcare costs.
• Supporting Data: Roughly 70% of employees who expect a specific type of assistance from employers.
  Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

In an increasingly complex  and expensive healthcare environment, employees are recasting their HR and benefit leaders as their plan providers. 

Roughly 70% of employees want and expect direct help or tailored support from their employers to better understand and navigate their healthcare options, according to financial services company Prudential Financial's 2026 Benefits and Beyond study. These findings reflect a broader trend, one where employees are increasingly looking to their employers not just for healthcare benefits, but for help navigating the healthcare system itself. 

"Employers have basically become the safety net for a healthcare system that was never designed to handle the complexity patients deal with today," said Rob LaHayne, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Leap Health. "They're the ones pushing for real answers on pricing, transparency and access, because nobody else in the system is motivated to solve these challenges."

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This shift in employer and employee relationship is not necessarily coming from employers themselves. For patients, care is still fragmented, inconvenient and confusing. For many employees, getting care involves figuring out what insurance covers, which doctors are in-network, how to find a specialist, how much something will cost, how to coordinate care, and what resources are available. As a result, many employees turn to the workplace benefits system to figure out what to do next.

When healthcare costs rise, employers feel the impact directly through their benefits spending. Costs are projected to increase 6.5% by the end of 2026, according to a recent report from Mercer, pushing the average per-employee cost above $18,500. Without guidance, employees may delay care or struggle to find appropriate treatment, potentially allowing health issues to become more serious and more expensive. 

According to LaHayne, that gives employers a clear financial incentive to help employees access the right care earlier and more effectively. However, without the right resources, they aren't able to provide employees with the support they're seeking.

"We're asking HR and benefits teams to essentially become healthcare operators who manage one of the company's largest cost centers," LaHayne said. "That pressure builds fast, and it can lead to decision fatigue, or worse, teams retreating back to the same vendor relationships that perpetuated the problem to begin with."

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What this means for leaders

The first step to addressing the issue is for HR and benefits leaders to demand greater transparency and accountability from their vendors, rather than simply accepting promises of savings. As employers take on greater fiduciary responsibility amid rising healthcare costs, they need partners that can clearly and defensibly demonstrate both what they're charging and how much employers are  actually saving. 

That transparency ultimately matters for employees, too, LaHayne said. For someone managing a chronic condition that requires specialty infusions, for example, effective benefits can mean the difference between care that fits into their life and a system that adds even more stress to an already difficult situation.

"For employees, this can really be the difference between care that actually fits into their life and care that just adds more stress to an already hard situation," LaHayne said. "When employers get it right, people get real support."

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Long term, LaHayne said that the employer's role as the healthcare plan sponsor is here to stay, just not in its current iteration. The future needs to include partnership, flexibility and transparency.

"Employers can't be expected to solve systemwide cost and access problems alone," LaHayne said. "But they can demand more from the vendors and point solutions in their ever more connected ecosystem."