Articles
Plain-language articles for European leadership responsible for U.S. healthcare expenditure. Written from the parent-company side, not the vendor side.
Article
September 2026
7 min read
Mercer projects an 8.2% increase in health benefit cost per employee for 2027 — the largest since 2003. Before approving another increase, European leadership should understand what is being purchased, who is being paid, and whether the plan is being managed in the interests of employees.
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Note
August 2026
U.S. disclosure rules require broker and consultant compensation to be reported to the plan. The reports are often technically complete and practically uninformative. What a parent company should ask for instead.
Contracts
July 2026
Pricing guarantees are meaningful only in relation to how the contract defines a generic, a specialty drug and a rebate. The definitions, not the guarantees, determine the cost.
Stop-loss
June 2026
Late notice, lasering and contract-basis mismatches are the most common reasons a large claim funded by the employer is never recovered from the stop-loss insurer.
Governance
May 2026
A short list of documents that allow a parent company to demonstrate, years later, why a U.S. healthcare expenditure was approved and on what basis.
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