Telehealth + AI Wellness Tools Meet High-Deductible Health Plans

Insurance premiums for small businesses have risen 33% in the past 5 years, and small businesses across the U.S. are bracing for another surge in health insurance costs. The cost of traditional group health insurance continues to rise, prompting some employers to question whether offering benefits will soon become unsustainable. In 2024 alone, employer premiums jumped about 7%, with average family coverage reaching $25,000. And 2025 is projected to bring roughly another 8–9% increase, pushing average per-employee coverage cost above $16,000. Health insurance has long been a top concern for small business owners, and with 2025–2026 premiums trending upward, the pressure on small employers’ budgets is intensifying. How can a small company fight back against these rising costs while keeping employees healthy and happy?

We’ll examine transitioning to high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) as a strategy to mitigate premium expenses, and how pairing HDHPs with AI-powered wellness and preventive care tools can reduce chronic disease risks and overall healthcare costs. The goal is to demonstrate to small business decision-makers that you can reduce costs without compromising employee well-being – in fact, you can enhance it. Let’s dive into why health costs are soaring, how HDHPs and AI tools work together, and what concrete benefits you can expect.

The 2025 Cost Crunch for Small Businesses

For small employers, especially those operating on tight margins, rising health premiums pose a significant challenge. Recent data confirms what many of you feel anecdotally: premiums are climbing at their fastest pace in years. An employer-sponsored family plan is projected to exceed $25,000 in 2025 (with single coverage averaging ~$8,900). Small businesses have seen their health premium payments jump 33% in the past five years, a growth rate outpacing general inflation and even payroll in many cases. It’s no wonder that many owners fear that offering health benefits could become unsustainable.

This cost crunch hits smaller firms harder. Larger companies can spread costs over more employees or self-insure, but a 50-person company in, say, Denver or Austin has far fewer options. In fact, health premiums now make up a growing share of total compensation for small firms. Many are forced to shift costs to employees (through higher deductibles or worker premium contributions) or consider dropping coverage entirely. According to a recent NFIB survey, health insurance cost is the top concern for small business owners year after year. With experts warning that costs will continue to rise into 2025, business owners are urgently seeking creative strategies to manage this burden.

One such strategy is the adoption of High-Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs). These plans lower the monthly premium by raising the deductible that employees must pay out-of-pocket. HDHPs are increasingly common in the small-group market; for example, more than half of employers now offer an HDHP option, and a large portion of employees (especially younger workers) choose them to get that lower premium. Simply put, HDHPs shift the upfront cost burden away from employers. However, they also shift more expenses to employees when care is needed, which can backfire if not handled wisely. Let’s examine how HDHPs work and why supporting employees in an HDHP environment is so critical.

HDHPs: A Double-Edged Sword

A High-Deductible Health Plan is exactly what it sounds like: health insurance with a higher deductible (the amount an employee pays out-of-pocket before insurance kicks in). In exchange, premiums are lower. Employees are understandably attracted to HDHPs because of the lower premium costs – their paycheck deductions are smaller. Employers likewise are attracted by potential savings and the idea that when employees have “skin in the game,” they’ll be more cost-conscious healthcare consumers.

There is truth to that: HDHPs, especially when paired with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), do encourage smarter shopping. As the share of workers on HDHPs increases, studies show premiums tend to grow more slowly (while out-of-pocket costs rise). In other words, moving to an HDHP can bend the cost curve on premiums for your company. And for 2025, many small businesses are considering HDHPs as a way to counter premium hikes in the 7–10% range.

However, HDHPs are a double-edged sword. The same mechanism that lowers premiums – higher patient cost-sharing – can lead employees to delay or avoid care. An employee facing a $2,000 or $3,000 deductible may skip going to the doctor or put off a lab test to save money. In fact, nearly half of employees in a recent survey admitted they skipped or delayed medical care due to high costs. When workers forego preventive visits, medications, or early treatment, small health issues can snowball into big and expensive problems. It’s a classic penny-wise, pound-foolish scenario: avoiding a few $40 copays could land someone in the ER with a $14,000 hospital bill later.

Research confirms this risk. Without proper support, HDHPs can become a barrier to care: employees with chronic conditions on HDHPs use less preventive and primary care, often leading to worse outcomes. Skipping routine care might save money this quarter, but it raises the chance of acute episodes – the worker who postpones a blood pressure check ends up with a stroke, or the one who avoids the clinic for that cough ends up needing an ER visit for pneumonia. These scenarios mean higher long-term costs (and human costs) for both employee and employer.

HDHPs can indeed save your business money if your employees stay healthy and engage in smart healthcare behaviors. The goal is to avoid those deferred-care disasters by giving employees the tools, knowledge, and support to manage their health within an HDHP model. As a business, you don’t want employees thinking “I can’t afford to see a doctor” – you want them to get care in the most cost-effective way before problems escalate. That’s where AI-powered wellness and preventive care tools come in. By leveraging technology and telehealth, even a small company can empower its workforce to navigate an HDHP, stay healthier, and actually contain costs for everyone. Let’s explore how that works.

AI-Powered Wellness Tools: Preventive Care

We’ve all heard the saying: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In healthcare, prevention and early intervention are the ounces that save pounds – or in our case, save thousands of dollars and countless hours of lost productivity. Today, new AI-powered wellness and preventive care tools are making it easier than ever to implement proactive health programs.

How AI has failed in healthcare.

Before we jump into AI in healthcare, let’s establish three basic ground rules.

1. AI should never replace healthcare providers and the human connection in healthcare.
2. AI is a tool, and tools provide benefits only when used in the correct setting with proper maintenance. This includes privacy, equity, equality, and updating evidence-based data.
3. The person guiding the care of your health should be a person who has empathy, compassion, and who you are able to see, hear, and meet with in person or virtually, not AI-generated scripts or algorithms.

Healthcare is personal. At its core, it’s about one human being asking for help and another offering care, empathy, and expertise. Forward Health, once a promising disruptor in primary care with $400 million in funding, shuttered its operations, serving as a reminder that technology alone cannot replace the human touch in medicine.

Forward’s failure can be traced to a fundamental flaw: they approached healthcare as a tech company first and a care provider second. While innovation in healthcare is essential, Forward’s model prioritized technology at the expense of personal connection. Their highly standardized, tech-driven care left little room for individualized treatment or meaningful patient-provider relationships. We are currently seeing more of the same with AI in electronic medical records and healthcare.

What do these AI wellness tools look like?

They include things like: AI-driven health apps and virtual coaches that can analyze an individual’s health data, wearable sensors (e.g. fitness trackers, smart blood pressure cuffs) feeding data into predictive algorithms, and telehealth platforms with AI “symptom checkers” or triage bots. In practical terms, an AI-powered wellness program might proactively identify that an employee is at risk for diabetes (for example, by analyzing patterns in their biometric screenings) and then alert their healthcare provider and guide that employee to schedule an appointment. These tools can send personalized reminders (“Hey John, it’s time for your annual skin cancer screening”) and even predict health crises before they happen (“Based on your vitals, your blood pressure medication may need an adjustment – let’s schedule a quick telehealth check-in”).

The impact on chronic disease risk and costs can be profound. By identifying issues early and encouraging people toward healthier behaviors, AI-driven preventive care reduces the need for expensive emergencies and hospital visits. For example, value-based care models in healthcare note that improving preventive screenings (like mammograms or colonoscopies) and managing chronic conditions up front results in fewer late-stage cancer treatments, heart attacks, and other crises. One analysis found that broad use of telehealth and preventive services could cut costs to the health system by over 50% by diverting patients from ERs and urgent care when it’s not truly necessary.

From an ROI standpoint, wellness and prevention programs are proven investments. Multiple studies – including a respected Harvard meta-analysis – found that medical costs fall about $3.27 for every $1 spent on wellness programs. In addition, every $1 of wellness investment returns about $2.73 in reduced absenteeism costs. Why such a high payoff? Because healthy employees use fewer expensive services, and they’re more present and productive at work. Preventing one diabetic complication or one ER visit for an asthma attack can easily save tens of thousands of dollars. Wellness programs attack the root causes (poor diet, stress, lack of preventive care) before they balloon into claims.

AI tools can take these programs to the next level. Traditional wellness programs sometimes fell short due to one-size-fits-all design and low engagement. AI and data analytics allow for personalized care at scale. Each employee gets guidance tailored to their needs and risk factors. At Mobile Care Health, we use connected devices and AI combined with providers who know the limits of AI and patient care. Data from a patient’s scale, blood pressure cuff, and sleep mat drive personalized medicine goals while maintaining preventive care. This always-on, personalized approach leads to real engagement: employees actually use and love the service, rather than tuning out generic wellness content.

To summarize, AI-powered wellness, when combined with AI-trained providers and preventive care tools, can spot health risks early, guide employees to healthier outcomes, and avert costly medical events. They address the exact concern we have with HDHPs – ensuring employees don’t neglect care due to cost or access issues. In the next section, we’ll see how combining an HDHP strategy with these AI and telehealth tools creates a synergy: lower insurance premiums and lower healthcare utilization costs. It’s the recipe for bending that cost curve and keeping your team healthy.

Marrying HDHPs with Telehealth & AI: Support Employees to Save Costs

How can a small business practically combine an HDHP with AI-driven preventive care? The key is to wrap your high-deductible plan with a safety net of telehealth services and longevity programs that help employees manage both their care and their costs. Think of it as adding a “healthcare concierge” alongside the insurance plan. At Mobile Care Health, this is exactly our approach: we partner with employers to provide a telehealth-driven wellness program that complements their HDHP offerings.

A crucial development for 2025 is that it’s now easier than ever to integrate telehealth with HDHPs. Recent legislation permanently allows HDHPs to cover telehealth services on a pre-deductible basis without jeopardizing HSA eligibility.

A  well-designed longevity or wellness program can tackle preventive and chronic care in an HDHP setting. For example, Mobile Care Health’s Longevity Telehealth Plans provide each enrollee with an annual telehealth wellness exam, routine screening lab panels, and even at-home biometric devices (smart scale and blood pressure cuffs, and sleep mat option) as part of the membership. We include health coaching sessions and ongoing virtual follow-ups to keep people on track. All of this is delivered outside the traditional insurance network – meaning it doesn’t bill the HDHP at all. This also means employees can access care on their first day and continue to receive it after they leave the company. This model of direct, concierge-style telehealth care focuses entirely on the patient’s needs without the usual insurance constraints. Employees get one-on-one personalized care, extended consultations, and round-the-clock access to providers via call or chat. Essentially, we fill the gaps that insurance doesn’t cover: nutritional guidance, weight loss, chronic condition check-ins, functional medicine, and preventive testing.

By offering such a program alongside an HDHP, a small business can ensure employees stay engaged in their health despite the high deductible. For instance, employees become more informed healthcare consumers when they have access to guidance and transparency. Many employers also provide price transparency tools and advisor services to HDHP members, which help employees compare costs across providers and find fair prices. For example, if an employee needs an MRI, a care advocate can point them to a high-quality facility that charges $600 instead of the $2,000 hospital MRI – a huge saving for both the employee (if they’re paying toward a deductible) and the health plan.

Another best practice is contributing to employees’ Health Savings Accounts or offering supplemental benefits to cushion the deductible. The employer can share some of the premium savings by seeding HSAs with a contribution (e.g., $500 per employee). This encourages employees to seek care when needed, using HSA funds, rather than avoiding it. It’s been shown that an HDHP paired with employer HSA contributions or similar arrangements mitigates the burden on employees and supports cost-conscious, responsible care-seeking.

The Payoff: Healthier Employees, Lower Costs, and Greater Transparency

Adopting these strategies isn’t just a feel-good exercise; it delivers tangible benefits to your business. When small businesses transition to HDHPs with AI-powered wellness support, they often see improvements on multiple fronts. Here are some of the concrete outcomes you can expect:

• Improved Employee Health & Productivity: Employees engage in preventive care and manage chronic issues better, leading to a healthier workforce. Wellness programs have shown returns of over $3 in medical cost savings per $1 spent by reducing health risk factors. Healthier employees mean higher energy at work and less sick time taken, boosting overall productivity.
• Fewer ER Visits and Big Claims: With 24/7 telehealth and early interventions, avoidable emergencies drop. Companies see fewer costly ER visits and hospitalizations because issues are addressed earlier. For example, one employer case study found that adding a proactive primary care program cut specialist referrals and unnecessary tests, saving over $220,000 in just seven months. Reducing these large claims helps stabilize your insurance premiums long-term.
• Lower Premiums & Healthcare Spend: The immediate benefit of HDHP adoption is a reduction in premium costs – often 10–20% lower premiums than a low-deductible plan. Moreover, as employees become savvy healthcare consumers, your plan’s claims experience improves, which can moderate future premium increases. In fact, shifting to a high-deductible model can slow the growth of premiums year over year. Many employers redirect a portion of savings to HSAs or wellness benefits, which further lowers overall healthcare spend by preventing expensive conditions.
• Better Cost Transparency & Employee Satisfaction: Employees gain visibility into healthcare prices and feel more control over their care. Tools that compare procedure costs, along with coaching on when and where to seek care, lead to greater cost transparency and less confusion. Workers no longer feel blind-sided by medical bills – they become informed shoppers. This, coupled with modern benefits like telehealth access, increases employee satisfaction and loyalty. In a competitive job market, offering an innovative benefits package (HDHP + robust telehealth/wellness) can actually be a selling point that helps attract and retain talent.

Importantly, these benefits feed into each other. When employees are healthier and have positive experiences with their benefits, they are more likely to stay with the company and contribute their best work. Lower absenteeism and turnover generate savings that are harder to quantify but very real for a small business’s bottom line. And when the next year’s insurance renewal comes, you have a good story to tell: fewer big claims, engaged employees, possibly even data from your wellness program demonstrating risk reduction. This can give you negotiating power to keep premiums in check.

Finally, let’s not overlook the human element. I deeply believe that investing in employee wellness is investing in your people’s lives. I’ve seen employees make life-changing improvements – like catching cancer early or reversing prediabetes – because their company gave them the tools and encouragement to take action. Those are victories that transcend dollars and cents. By taking this approach, you send a powerful message to your team: “We care about your health and future.” That drives loyalty and morale in ways few other benefits can.

A New Path Forward – Get Started Today

As health insurance costs rise into 2025 and 2026, small businesses don’t have to be helpless victims of the trend. By rethinking your health plan strategy – transitioning to an HDHP for lower premiums and pairing it with forward-thinking telehealth and AI-driven wellness support – you can create a win-win scenario. Your business saves money and gains predictability, while your employees stay healthier, more supported, and more informed about their care. It’s a proactive approach that turns a high-deductible plan from a blunt cost-shifting instrument into part of a smart, holistic health program.

At Mobile Care Health, this is exactly what we specialize in. Our telehealth services and longevity programs act as the perfect complement to HDHPs, filling in the gaps and elevating your benefit offering from “high-deductible insurance” to comprehensive healthcare support. Whether it’s our virtual primary care consultations, chronic disease management plans, or preventive longevity assessments, we help your team take charge of their health – and we use advanced AI tools to keep engagement high and care personalized. The end result is what every employer wants: lower costs, healthier and happier employees, and peace of mind that you’re doing right by your people.

Ready to take control of your company’s healthcare costs and employee wellness? I invite you to take the next step. Book a strategy call with Mobile Care Health today, and let’s explore how these AI-powered wellness solutions and HDHP strategies can work for your business.

Dr. Jacob “Jake” Weinstein, DNP, is a board-certified Nurse Practitioner and the Chief Medical Officer of Mobile Care Health.