Should Employees See the Cost of Healthcare Before They Get Care?

For most employers, healthcare feels like a black box. It’s expensive, confusing, and impossible to control.

Your health insurance premiums are driven by healthcare costs. And the people actually using the care — your employees — rarely see those costs until after the fact.

We’re asking employees to make smart healthcare decisions without the one thing they need to do it: information.

What Happens When Employees Can Actually See Costs

In the past five years, how many times have you scheduled care versus rushed to the hospital?

The fact is, most care is planned — surgeries, imaging, labs, therapy — and every one of those appointments has massive price differences depending on where employees go.

For example, a shoulder surgery at an outpatient hospital might cost $12,000. The same procedure at an ambulatory surgery center? $3,000. And it could be the same doctor performing the surgery.

That’s a huge difference for identical care.

When employees finally see that data and understand that price doesn’t always equal quality, they start making different choices.

They have the option to make different choices.

We’ve seen it firsthand, hundreds of members choosing high-quality, lower-cost providers once they have access to real cost and quality information.

And no, this isn’t about emergencies.If you’re in crisis, get care.But most healthcare isn’t an emergency and that’s where transparency changes everything.

Why Hiding Costs Hurts Everyone

Outpatient hospitals are among the biggest cost drivers for employers. When employees don’t have visibility, they default to the familiar, the big hospital brand down the street. Every time that happens, claims go up. Premiums follow. And the cycle continues.

Models that leave employees out of the cost and quality conversation simply don’t work. People haven’t been at the table for decades and it shows in both our prices and our outcomes.

This is why incentivizing members to engage in cost and quality decisions is essential.

The Path Forward

Healthcare doesn’t need more layers, markups, or mystery math.It needs transparency, accountability, and alignment.

At Sympl, we use data analytics and human advocacy to help employers and employees see what’s really happening with their healthcare dollars. And they can make better decisions together.

When employees understand cost, coverage, and care, premiums stabilize and coverage improves.It’s that simple.

Healthcare should be affordable. It should be easy to use.

That’s the standard we build around.

That’s what makes benefits Sympl.