The 2027 Number Is In. Your Employees Are the Ones Who'll Pay It.

Benefits planning has a rhythm to it. The forecasts land in June and July, the spreadsheets get built in August and September, and by October the decisions are already made. We are at the front of that window right now — which makes this the last stretch where the numbers are still information rather than a fait accompli.

Here is what the numbers say. Segal's 2027 Health Plan Cost Trend Survey, released at the end of July, puts the median projected medical plan trend at 9.9% — the highest the firm has recorded in fifteen years — with prescription drug trend running even hotter at 11.5%. PwC's Behind the Numbers report, built from interviews with actuaries at 27 health plans covering more than 103 million employer-sponsored members, lands at 9% for the commercial group market, which it calls the steepest single-year figure in seventeen years.

Two independent methodologies, two different data sets, and the same answer: next year costs meaningfully more than this year, and this year already cost more than the year before it.

The increase does not stop at the employer

For most of the past few years, employers absorbed the increases. That is changing. Mercer's survey of companies with 500 or more employees found that roughly two-thirds expect to raise what employees pay through payroll deductions in 2027, and about 48% plan other changes — higher deductibles, higher copays — that move more of the cost to the point of care.

Those are two different mechanisms, and it's worth separating them, because they fail in different ways.

A higher payroll deduction is predictable. It shows up every pay period, everyone feels it equally, and people budget around it. A higher deductible is not predictable. It sits dormant until someone actually needs care — and then it arrives all at once, in the exact moment the person is least equipped to absorb it.

That relocation is the part that rarely makes the budget deck. When the deductible goes up, utilization goes down — and plan sponsors often read that as a win. But the drop is not selective. People don't skip only the unnecessary visits. They skip the sore throat that turns into something, the refill they stretch to six weeks, the first conversation about anxiety that would have been cheap in March and is expensive in November.

The coverage gap has a specific shape

The employees most exposed to this are the ones with the least room to absorb it. Hourly workers. Part-time and seasonal staff who don't hit the eligibility threshold. Anyone in the stretch between jobs, or in a waiting period, or covering a spouse who lost coverage. And increasingly, the fully-covered employee on a high-deductible plan who is technically insured and functionally paying cash for everything until March.

That last group is the one that surprises people. Being on the plan and being able to use the plan have quietly become different things.

Why this is a PersonalCare Bundles conversation

PersonalCare Bundles were built for exactly this gap — not as a replacement for major medical, and not as insurance. They are a membership that sits underneath the plan and handles the everyday layer: virtual primary care, mental health support, prescription savings, and lab access, at a flat monthly cost that doesn't move when the deductible does.

The strategic value in a 9.9% trend year is that it gives a benefits team a third option. The usual choice is binary — absorb the increase or pass it along. A membership layer lets an employer pass along more of the premium increase while improving what the employee can actually reach on a Tuesday afternoon. The deductible can go up and day-to-day access can still get better. Those two things are not in tension when the access layer doesn't run through the deductible.

The part of the bundle that will matter most next year

If we had to point at one component that earns its place in 2027, it's the behavioral health piece — and not because it's the fashionable answer.

It's because behavioral health is where the access math is worst. As of December 2025, 137 million Americans — about 40% of the country — lived in a federally designated mental health professional shortage area, a figure that grew by 15 million people in a single year. In those areas, only about a quarter of the estimated need is being met. The national average wait for behavioral health services sits near 48 days.

Now stack a higher deductible on top of a 48-day wait. A benefit that requires someone to wait seven weeks and pay full freight when they arrive is a benefit most people will quietly stop trying to use. That is the problem Behavioral 1st Moment™ was built to solve: 24/7 access to a real, master's-level clinician at the 1st Moment someone reaches out — no waitlist, no deductible standing in the doorway, no seven-week gap between deciding to ask for help and getting it.

What to do with the next ninety days

The forecasts are published, the quotes are landing, and most 2027 decisions will be locked by late fall. That leaves a real window — roughly August through October — to look at the plan and ask a different question than the one usually on the table.

Not how do we hold the increase down. That question has been asked for four straight years and the trend has gone up anyway. The better question is: if our employees are going to pay more next year, what can we give them that they can actually use before the deductible resets?

That question has an answer, and it costs a great deal less than another point of trend.