Somewhere in your building this spring, a benefits problem surfaced. An ugly claims month. Pharmacy spend climbing. Complaints about the network. And someone said the six most expensive words in business: “We’ll deal with it at renewal.”
It sounds responsible. It is a decision to pay more, dressed up as patience.
The options have already collapsed
Your renewal lands in October. It gets built over the summer – claims data, carrier positioning, and your advisor’s incentives, all locked in months before you see a number. By the time the meeting happens, you are not negotiating. You are attending a presentation. (A polished one. There will be slides.)
Then you get three choices: accept the increase, shop the same product with a different logo, or stall. None of them touch what drives the number. You will also be told there is no time to try anything else this year. Conveniently, that will be true.
Waiting is the expensive part
A Chief Commercial Officer told me his sales quota went up by $8 million this year. Not because the business grew. Because the health insurance renewal did, and his team now has to sell enough to cover it. That is what “we’ll fix it at renewal” looks like when the bill lands on someone’s number.
Think about how you run every other major contract. You start early, set the terms, benchmark alternatives, and walk in with leverage. Now look at the health plan: one of the largest spends in the company, repriced every year, on a timeline where you hold zero cards.
The increase gets your attention. The year most companies spend not acting costs more than the increase itself. Structural changes – how the plan is funded, what the contracts allow, how pharmacy gets priced – need months of runway. Ask for them in October and the answer is “next year.” Every year.
The calendar is the strategy
The employers who control this spend work on it in June and July, while there is still time to change the structure instead of arguing about the price. They renegotiate contracts, restructure funding, and test alternatives before anything gets locked. They walk into October with a renewal they shaped, not one they received.
It is July. Your renewal is under construction right now. Are you in the room, or are you waiting for the reveal?
Book a 30-minute mid-year review. October will feel very different.
