Some of the country’s most recognizable employers are reshaping their health insurance benefits heading into 2027.
In the span of a few weeks, Walt Disney, Bloomberg, Starbucks, and the City of Dallas have all taken actions to rein in healthcare spending, from restricting spousal coverage to eliminating plan options or cutting drug benefits. The announcements are offering a real-time look at how employers across industries are responding to what benefits industry groups have been describing as the most sustained period of healthcare cost inflation in around two decades.
Starting next year, Disney will no longer offer health benefits to the spouses and domestic partners of its 200,000 U.S. employees if they can get insurance through their own employer, Puck reported on Aug. 20.
Bloomberg told employees this month they will have to start contributing to their health insurance premiums for the first time, ending its practice of covering them 100%, Semafor reported. The news organization cited rising healthcare costs and a market-wide shift in how coverage is funded.
Starbucks said it would stop covering GLP-1s prescribed for weight loss starting in October, according to Business Insider, while Cigna made the same decision for its employee health plan in July. In contrast, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan called the company’s $250 million annual spending on GLP-1s for its employees “a good investment,” per CNBC.
The City of Dallas said Aug. 13 it is eliminating its PPO plan for 2027 and moving its remaining options to a narrower network. The city’s pharmacy costs alone are projected to reach $54 million this year, up $14 million from the prior fiscal year, the Dallas Observer reported.
According to Mercer, nearly half (48%) of large employers expect to make changes to their health plans for coverage next year, resulting in higher out-of-pocket costs for employees by way of higher deductibles or copays. At the same time, nearly a third (31%) of large employers currently offer or plan to offer at least one non-traditional medical plan next year, such as a high-performance network or variable copay plan, and another 38% are considering one of those approaches.
Meanwhile, a growing number of companies are dropping group coverage altogether, opting instead for ICHRAs, which give workers a tax advantaged stipend to buy their own coverage on the ACA marketplace. The number of people covered under such arrangements doubled year over year and surpassed 500,000 at the start of 2026, driven largely by a surge in adoption among large employers, according to a report from the HRA Council.
The moves to cut benefits or redefine them altogether come as multiple recent industry surveys project employer healthcare costs will rise by double digits or close to it in 2027.
Aon projected Aug. 20 that U.S. employer healthcare costs will rise 9.5% next year, pushing average costs above $19,000 per employee. The firm called it the fourth consecutive year of near-double-digit increases, based on data from more than 1,100 employers covering 7.9 million employees and $135 billion in 2026 healthcare spending. Even after mitigation efforts, employer costs rose 8.8% in 2026 to an average of $14,432 per employee, Aon found.
A WTW survey reviewed by the Wall Street Journal put the number even higher, with 471 employers surveyed projecting an 11.1% cost increase in 2027, the steepest projected single-year increase in nearly two decades. Employers cited expensive cancer treatments as growing GLP-1 usage as some of the factors driving up costs.
In June, PwC projected a 9% medical cost trend for the commercial group market in 2027 through a survey of 27 health plans covering more than 103 million employer-sponsored members. Insurers identified provider adoption of AI documentation and coding tools, provider consolidation, pharmacy spending, behavioral health utilization and a high insurer loss rate under the No Surprises Act’s arbitration system as the primary inflators.
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