Canadian health benefits plan members are increasingly feeling financially strained, according to the 2024 Benefits Canada Healthcare Survey — a finding that experts say should be a call to action to employers to include more financial wellness supports in benefits plans.
Personal finances has remained plan members’ top stressor for the past two years, with the share of member respondents citing it as a source of stress steadily climbing year over year, from 35 per cent in 2022 to 43 per cent this year. Plan members in poor financial health were also more likely to report high to extreme daily stress over the last three months.
Speaking during Benefits Canada’s report launch event, Lancelot Lambert, regional vice-president for Ontario and Atlantic business development and group insurance at Desjardins Insurance, said plan members have been hard hit by high inflation and interest rates. He also cited recent reports that food bank usage in Canada had grown significantly over the past two years.
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“If you’re in an unpredictable situation situation where . . . you don’t know how you’re going to pay your bills, that is going to add financial stress,” he said. “And then that leads to the mental-health piece. . . . These are areas we need to take into consideration.”
Barbara Martinez, national practice leader for drug solutions at the Canada Life Assurance Co., said benefits plans are beginning to include new financial wellness supports like credit counselling services, student debt savings programs and registered education savings programs, in addition to retirement savings programs.
“These types of offerings within a benefits plan go a long way to improving the financial health of plan members,” she said, noting the importance of recognizing the different financial needs of plan members.
The survey also found three in five plan members are living with a chronic condition. The most common chronic conditions were mental-health conditions, high cholesterol, arthritis, hypertension and chronic pain.
Canada Life is seeing mental-health conditions drive disability claims activity, both in volume and cost due to their typically longer durations. “Multi-morbidity” — or plan members living with two or more chronic illnesses — is also a growing disability trend, said Martinez. The insurer saw the percentage of people on disability with a secondary diagnosis increase to 37 per cent in 2023. “Each one of these may not be debilitating on its own, but collectively they can extend disability claim durations.”
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Cardiac disease, depression and diabetes are the most common drug claims, she said.
Thirty-eight per cent of plan members live with chronic pain, according to the survey. Insurers and employers need to find preventative solutions, said Lambert, as the typical approach is often prescription drugs. He suggested ergonomic assessments, work station modifications and stretching workshops.
Referring to the survey findings, he noted plan members with chronic pain were more likely to feel their benefits plan didn’t meet their needs. “We know there’s been a movement for employers to bundle some of their paramedicals together and I get the cost savings aspect of it, [but] I do think we need to consider maybe unbundling them and ensuring employees have access to [multiple providers] to attack some of this.”
Download the full 2024 Benefits Canada Healthcare Survey report here.
Tune in for the rest of the coverage of this year’s event throughout the week.