Employers Aren't Buying Because Costs Are Rising. They're Buying Because They Can See the Data.

Key Takeaways

• Employers with full claim-level data access used an average of 11.9 of 26 tracked cost-management strategies, versus 7.9 for employers with limited or no access — a gap that held as statistically significant on 21 of the 26 strategies. — National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, "Pulse of the Purchaser 2026" (n=408), via Insurance Business Magazine
• Employers expecting cost increases of 9% or higher were no more likely to adopt new purchasing strategies than employers expecting smaller increases — budget pain, on its own, predicted nothing. — "Pulse of the Purchaser 2026," via Insurance Business Magazine
• 65.3% of employers reported complete medical claim-level access, but only 58.6% could actually audit their complete files — roughly a seven-point gap between holding data and being able to verify it. — "Pulse of the Purchaser 2026," via Insurance Business Magazine
• Independent data warehouses delivered complete medical claims access at an 85.9% rate, compared with 59.2% when the health plan or TPA provided access directly — where the data sits changes what the buyer can see. — "Pulse of the Purchaser 2026," via Insurance Business Magazine
• The access gap is widest on vendor-oversight tactics: network evaluation on price and quality (49% vs. 27%) and direct hospital contracting (39% vs. 17%) — both 22-point spreads. — "Pulse of the Purchaser 2026," via Insurance Business Magazine

Every health-tech company selling into self-insured employers has some version of the same slide. Trend line going up and to the right, your intervention bending it back down, a savings number at the end with an asterisk.

The asterisk is the problem. Not because the math is wrong, but because the buyer has no independent way to check it — and a claim a buyer cannot check is a claim they have to take on faith from a vendor they just met.

New survey data suggests they mostly don't. What separates employers who act from employers who stall isn't how much cost pressure they're under. It's whether they can see their own claims data. That reorders what your marketing should be leading with.

The Predictor Nobody Put in the Pitch Deck

Cost expectations turned out to be almost useless as a signal of buying behavior. In the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions' Pulse of the Purchaser 2026 survey — 408 employer and purchaser responses fielded in May and June 2026 — employers bracing for increases of 9% or more were no more likely to adopt new purchasing strategies than employers expecting something gentler.

Data access told a completely different story. Employers with full claim-level access reported using an average of 11.9 of 26 tracked cost-management strategies. Employers with limited or no access used 7.9. Insurance Business Magazine's reporting on the findings notes the difference held as statistically significant on 21 of the 26 strategies — not a spike in one category, but a consistent pattern across nearly the whole list.

One note on sourcing, because it matters for how much weight to put on this: the full report sits behind a registration form on the National Alliance's site. The figures here come from Insurance Business Magazine's coverage of it. If you plan to cite these numbers in your own collateral, pull the report yourself and confirm.

And be precise about what the finding says. Data access predicts strategy adoption. It's a correlation, and a strong one, but the survey doesn't establish that handing an employer their claims file causes them to start buying. The plausible reading runs both ways — employers who fought to get their data were probably already the ones inclined to act on it. Either way, the practical consequence for a marketer is the same. The employers doing the most buying are the ones who can see what they're buying against.

Having the Data and Being Able to Check It Are Two Different Things

There's a second gap inside the first one, and it's the more useful of the two.

Among surveyed employers, 65.3% reported complete medical claim-level access. Only 58.6% said they could audit their complete files. That roughly seven-point spread is the distance between possessing data and being able to confirm it's right — between a file that arrives and a file you can interrogate.

Where the data lives changes the odds substantially. When an independent data warehouse held it, 85.9% of employers reported complete medical claim-level access. When the health plan or TPA provided access directly, that figure was 59.2%. Same employers, same appetite, different architecture, twenty-six points of difference in what they can actually see.

For a vendor, this is the most actionable number in the survey. It means "we integrate with your claims data" is not a differentiated statement. Roughly two-thirds of the market already has claims access of some kind. The scarce thing is verification — the ability to check the file against the source, reconcile it, and defend the result to a CFO. If your product produces a number the buyer cannot trace back to a record they control, you've built the same asterisk they already distrust.

The Gap Is Widest Exactly Where You Sell

Look at which strategies separate high-access from low-access employers and a pattern falls out immediately: the gap is largest on the tactics that require auditing somebody else.

• Network evaluation on price and quality — 49% of full-access employers, 27% of limited-access employers. A 22-point gap.
• Direct hospital contracting — 39% versus 17%. Another 22-point gap.
• Advanced primary care — 45% versus 22%, a 23-point gap.
• Hospital price data used regularly in purchasing decisions — just 30.4% of employers overall, which tells you how much of this market still can't act on transparency data that technically already exists.

Every one of those is a vendor-oversight move. Evaluating a network means grading a carrier's work. Contracting directly with a hospital means going around one. Redirecting spend into advanced primary care means arguing with a status quo somebody else built. None of them is possible on summary reporting supplied by the party being evaluated.

Which is why the low-access employer isn't a slow buyer. They're a blocked one. They can run the strategies that don't require independent verification, and they're structurally shut out of the ones that do — including, often, yours. If your product's value depends on the buyer being able to measure a third party, your real prerequisite isn't budget. It's data they can audit.

That distinction should be doing work in your targeting. Two employers with identical headcount, identical trend, identical stated frustration are not the same prospect if one of them routes claims through an independent warehouse and the other gets a quarterly PDF from their TPA. Most account-based targeting models in this category segment on size, funding, and industry. Almost none segment on whether the buyer can see their own data — which, per this survey, is the variable that separates the accounts that move from the accounts that nod politely.

The Regulation Doing Your Framing For You

The timing helps. The CAA 2026, signed February 3, 2026, extended data-disclosure requirements beyond PBMs to TPAs and other plan service providers. A Department of Labor rule proposed in January 2026 would require advance disclosures from PBMs and PBM-affiliated brokers and consultants serving ERISA self-funded plans.

The direction of travel is one way, and it's toward the buyer. Employers who couldn't previously get a straight answer about what their service providers were charging are being handed a legal basis to ask. Plan sponsors already carrying fiduciary exposure now have a clearer standard to be measured against.

That's a marketing opening, and it's not the one most vendors will reach for. The reflex will be urgency — comply now, deadline coming, here's a checklist. Fine, but thin, and every competitor will run it.

The better move is to position your product as the thing that makes the newly available data usable. Disclosure creates a file. It doesn't create an analysis, a benchmark, or a decision. An employer who receives disclosures they can't interpret is in the same position as an employer who received nothing, minus the excuse. Content that teaches a benefits leader how to read what they're now entitled to receive will outperform content that reminds them a rule exists.

What a Data-Access Pitch Actually Contains

Swap the savings estimate for a verification claim. That's the whole reframe, and it changes what every asset in your funnel has to carry.

A cost-savings pitch asks the buyer to believe you. A data-access pitch invites them to check you. Only one of those survives a procurement process run by someone whose job depends on defending the decision. Concretely:

1. Lead with what you expose, not what you save. Name the fields, the granularity, the refresh cadence, and the retention terms. The buyer's first question is what they'll be able to see — answer it before they ask.
2. Publish your data-access requirements openly. What claim files do you need, at what level, from whom? A prospect who can't meet them isn't a lost deal, they're a disqualified one, and finding that out in week one is worth more than a quarter of nurture.
3. Document auditability, not just integration. Given only 58.6% of employers can audit their complete files, "can they verify this themselves" is the sharper question. Show the reconciliation path.
4. Say where the data sits. Independent warehouse, your environment, the plan's, the TPA's. The 85.9%-versus-59.2% split says architecture is a buying criterion, whether or not your competitors treat it as one.
5. Give them a pre-purchase diagnostic. A short self-assessment on what data they currently have and can audit is a better lead magnet than an ROI calculator, because it produces a finding the buyer already believes instead of a projection they discount.
6. Model outcomes with their inputs, not your averages. If a savings figure appears at all, it should be built from numbers the buyer supplied and can re-run.

Notice how much of that is publishing work rather than sales work. It gets read during the research phase, months before anyone books a call, which is where this decision is functionally made. Teams rebuilding a health-tech funnel around evidence rather than assertion are doing the work we spend most of our time on.

The vendors who win the sophisticated end of this market won't be the ones with the boldest savings claim. They'll be the ones whose claims a benefits leader can take to a CFO and defend without a single asterisk.