When Employees Get to Choose, They Choose Better Coverage

Updated 2026-10-29

Employees offered an individual-coverage allowance do not necessarily choose the lowest-premium plan. Take Command’s review of the HRA Council’s 2026 data reports that 81% of employees selected coverage costing more than their employer’s allowance, contributing their own money to obtain the plan they preferred.

The remaining 19% found a plan fully covered by the allowance, in some cases with funds left for other eligible expenses when the arrangement allowed them. These are observed choices in the report’s data, not a prediction of what every workforce will do.

The review reported a median allowance of $459 per covered life and a median premium of $567. The median additional employee payment was $105, and employer allowances covered about 81% of the premium for preferred plans on average. These statistics describe different measures across the dataset. They should not be treated as an exact subtraction for a single typical employee.

Plan selections also suggest that employees were considering more than the monthly premium. Gold accounted for 34% of subscriber selections and Silver for 32%, compared with 29% for Bronze. Fifty-six percent of Marketplace enrollments through ICHRA were for primary subscribers younger than 45.

The Council’s information came from 17 participating organizations. Its market totals include both directly observed enrollment and estimates for coverage not fully visible to data providers. The findings help describe behavior in a growing market, but do not establish that an employee who spends more necessarily receives better care or a better financial result.

Agent Takeaway: Show employees the employer contribution and their remaining premium side by side, then compare networks, prescriptions, deductibles, and maximum out-of-pocket costs. A lower monthly premium can come with a different cost-sharing tradeoff; a higher premium is not automatically the better choice.

For employers, a defined contribution can support budgeting while allowing employees to select different plans. The quality of that choice depends on understandable information and suitable local coverage, not on presenting the largest possible menu without guidance.