You know you are a fiduciary on your 401(k). There is a committee, there are minutes, somebody benchmarks the funds. The whole apparatus.
Now ask who plays that role for your health plan. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.)
That silence is the subject of this post.
The duty exists whether anyone mentioned it or not
Under ERISA and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, health plan sponsors carry real obligations: select and monitor vendors prudently, make sure fees are reasonable, act in your employees’ interest. That duty sits with the sponsor – a person, a committee, your company. Not your broker. Not the carrier. You cannot outsource it, and signing the renewal every year does not discharge it.
Here is the asymmetry: your health plan spends multiples of what your 401(k) match costs, with a fraction of the oversight.
Why this one got skipped
The retirement plan learned discipline the hard way – years of scrutiny made committees and benchmarking standard practice. The health plan never had that reckoning. It grew up as an HR purchase – renewed annually, advised by people whose pay rises with the spend, presented as a done deal every October. Nobody convened a committee because nobody said the word “fiduciary” out loud in that room. Ever.
What meeting the duty looks like
Nothing exotic. The same discipline you already run on the retirement side: know what your advisor is paid, and get it in writing. Benchmark your vendors. Read the contracts before signing, or have someone read them for you. Document the process.
A calendar and a folder, used consistently. That is most of it. This is stewardship of the plan your employees depend on, and of money that is ultimately theirs and yours.
You already know how to do this. You do it every quarter for a plan a fraction of this size.
So: who is the fiduciary for your health plan? If you had to stop and think, that is worth a conversation.
