Employers Scrutinize Vendors as Health Care Costs Continue to Rise

Jun 20
Jun 20, 2025

As health care costs continue to significantly increase, employers are paying closer attention to their spending on vendors and making sure those outside companies are helping them meet their goals, according to a recent WTW survey. Jeff Levin-Scherz, M.D., WTW’s population health leader, tells AIS Health that the scrutiny of vendors is a change from recent years when employers invested more in vendors with the hope that they could help them control costs and make their employees healthier.

WTW’s Benefit Trends Survey, which was released on June 9, found that 57% of employers said they were planning on or considering either enhancing the value of the health care benefits vendors within the next three years or switching to better-value vendors. That was tied for the third-most common approach for companies, following realigning spending across benefits (63%) and adopting navigation solutions to support employees using benefits (60%). Levin-Scherz attributes the focus on vendors to the fact that the cost of medical care in the U.S. is projected to increase by 10.2% this year, among the highest growth rates in more than two decades.
Read more
© 2025 MMIT

Tim Casey

Tim has been a reporter and editor for newspapers, websites and magazines for more than 20 years, including 10 years covering health care business topics. He has a deep knowledge of the managed care industry and pharmacy benefit management. He also has experience covering medical conferences and clinical and legislative health care issues. In 2014, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing selected Tim as one of 15 journalists to participate in a national symposium on the Affordable Care Act. Tim has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Notre Dame and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University.