Are We Ready for the Next Health Crisis?

The American healthcare system is heading toward a breaking point, and the strategies most companies are reaching for will not hold. Procurement cannot solve a rising-cost problem of this size. The employers who weather what comes next will be the ones who step into a leadership role on health itself.

Former CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen frames the pressure as coming from several places at once. ACA premiums are rising 26% on average for 2026 with tax credits in place, and closer to 67% without them. As prices climb, younger and healthier members exit the risk pool, which pushes prices higher and drives more healthy members out.

Parts of the country may not have individual market coverage at all next year, which is precisely the market that ICHRA strategies depend on. HR1 will squeeze Medicaid and shift cost to the employer book on top of that, and AI, often pitched as the cost-saver, is making the underlying claim trend worse by fueling a payer-provider arms race over coding and reimbursement.

What that leaves is a problem no contract can solve. The work is closer to organizational leadership than procurement: transparency about what is happening to cost, senior leaders modeling the health decisions they want employees to make, and treating benefits as a function the C-suite owns. Change happens at the pace of trust, and the runway to build it is shorter than it looks.

Watch the full episode to hear Dr. Cohen's account of what went right, what went wrong, and how employers can build more resilient health strategies going forward.