Higher deductibles. Wellness points. Free gym memberships. Employers keep layering on these fixes, and every renewal still brings a bigger bill. Aon puts 2026 employer health care cost growth at 8.8% and projects 9.5% for 2027.
The economic incentives inside your benefits plan are broken, and that design flaw is what keeps your renewal costs climbing.
Why prevention looks like a cost to employees
A standard plan rewards sickness. An employee who skips a $50 co-pay keeps $50 today. Six months later, the same condition lands them in the ER, and your company pays thousands. Every time, the math works against you.
You focus on total cost; your employee focuses on out-of-pocket. Those two goals pull in opposite directions. As long as prevention looks like a cost to employees, they’ll put it off, and you’ll pay later.
The third force: personal wealth
The fix is a third force: personal wealth. Real dollars and automatic retirement savings, earned the moment an employee completes a preventive action.
An employee gets a notification that their annual physical is due, with a clear offer: complete it this month, and the Store balance and retirement account both get funded. That’s a structural shift in incentives.
How it works
A patent-pending platform tracks a standardized set of preventive actions: labs, scans, immunizations, chronic-condition follow-ups. When an action is verified, the employee earns two things at once:
- WellthCare Store™ dollars - instant, spendable dollars for FSA-approved products. No reimbursement forms. No waiting.
- Automatic retirement contributions - deposits that compound over time. The account grows while the employee gets healthier.
The employee gets an immediate reason to get screened. You get a healthier population before claims hit your plan.
How it layers onto your current plan
This is a zero-net-cost add-on that layers on top of your current BUCA (Blue Cross, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna) or self-funded plan. No disruption to your existing coverage, and no new employer out-of-pocket cost; funding comes from employee pre-tax elections and tax efficiencies. WellthCare™, the first Health-to-Wealth™ Benefit System, delivers this layer with $0-co-pay care used first, earned Store rewards, and automatic retirement contributions.
Within 6-12 months of real usage, the system collects behavior data from your own population: who gets screenings, who sticks to medications, who avoids the ER.
Who qualifies, and what the plan requires
Participation follows the plan’s structure, not a promise that everyone qualifies. Participants are W-2 employees in the employer’s Section 125 plan. Business owners are not eligible: self-employed individuals, partners, LLC members taxed as partnerships, and owners of more than 2% of an S corporation. A family member can join only as an eligible W-2 employee. Participants must also be covered under ACA-compliant employer-sponsored group health coverage, through their own employer or a spouse’s employer. WellthCare is used first and alongside that coverage, never as a standalone replacement for major medical. Employers that do not sponsor ACA-compliant coverage can add an optional minimum essential coverage (MEC) plan through the program.
What the Readiness Index shows
Once the data accumulates, the platform generates a proprietary WellthCare Readiness Index™. It’s a data-driven report built from your own usage, and it shows:
- Which employees turning 65 are ready to move to a WellthCare Medicare™ plan, taking their high claims out of your risk pool.
- How much you would save on pharmacy costs with transparent, no-spread pricing.
- Projected savings from moving to WellthCare Complete™, the fully integrated self-funded system, using real behavior data rather than actuarial estimates.
For the first time, you have proof before you commit. The decision rests on your own numbers.
Moving to a fully integrated self-funded plan
Once your population is healthier and pharmacy costs are transparent, the next step is clear: WellthCare Complete, the fully integrated self-funded replacement for your BUCA plan. By then the groundwork is done. Healthier employees, cleaner data, lower risk.
Employers who make this move see projected savings of 30-45% against traditional BUCA premiums, while their employees keep their Store dollars and growing retirement accounts.
Flipping the incentives
You can keep raising deductibles and waiting for the next renewal increase, or you can redesign the incentives so the right choice pays everyone.
Companies that adopt a Health-to-Wealth operating system cut costs and become employers people want to work for. When health and wealth both feel out of reach, that’s the edge that matters.
Prevention is the one lever that cuts claims and builds wealth at the same time. See what a WellthCare Plan would look like for your team.
This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax, or medical advice. Employers should consult their own advisors.