TL;DR: When her carrier's renewal letter demanded a 26% increase on health insurance, Holly Lutz from NOABRANDS went back to market and used exactly what she knew about her own workforce’s claims, usage, and tolerance for trade-offs to negotiate the number down by more than half. Then she used that same knowledge to explain the outcome to 120 employees in a way they actually believed.

NOABRANDS’ health insurance carrier wanted a 26% increase on its 2026 renewal.

Most HR leaders in that position negotiate the number first and figure out the explanation later. Holly Lutz, Director of Human Resources for the US Division of NOABRANDS, did the opposite. Running HR alone for a company of about 120 employees, she already knew which employees drove the company's claims, which benefits they actually used, and which cuts they would tolerate without losing trust in the plan. That knowledge is what let her take a full market re-shop back to the carrier, price out a competing structure, and force the number down from 26% to roughly 11%, without guessing at what the workforce could absorb.

The number moved because of something Holly knew going in, something that had nothing to do with the negotiation table.

Something You Can’t Negotiate Your Way Out Of

That knowledge did not start with a plan to go to market. It started with Holly doing what most HR leaders would do first: going back to the carrier directly. "The renegotiation brought us down 3% to 23%," she says.

Her budget was built around something closer to 10%. Direct renegotiation was not going to get there. So Holly took the account to market.

In addition to collecting quotes from other carriers, Holly priced out an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement, where NOABRANDS would hand employees a fixed contribution and a broker instead of a group plan. "We did seriously consider an ICHRA because of our current carrier," Holly says. NOABRANDS did not end up adopting the ICHRA. Instead, the company moved to a new provider that could beat the incumbent's number.

Switching carriers was not the only lever Holly pulled. NOABRANDS also bundled several voluntary benefits onto the same renewal. "They have some bundling that saves us a little bit," Holly says. And instead of splitting the increase evenly across every employee, Holly restructured how much each tier of coverage would absorb. "It wasn't just 50-50 with our employees. It varied based on tiers," she says.

"Thankfully with all of the things we were looking at, we were able to get around 11%," Holly says. The first three points came from asking the incumbent to be reasonable. Getting the rest took a real, priced alternative, and a handful of structural changes.

Getting there required information the renewal letter itself never provides. Pricing an ICHRA credibly means knowing exactly what the company pays per employee, per tier, well enough to compare it against a completely different funding model. Getting real competing quotes means handing other carriers a workforce profile detailed enough to underwrite against. All of this depended on data HR already had before the letter arrived, not data it gathered in response to it.

For NOABRANDS, the piece of that profile that shaped every quote it got back was a single employee. "One of the challenges is we have one person that takes up 50% of our claims," Holly says. Every carrier evaluating the account would see that number immediately. It is not something a market re-shop can route around. It has to be addressed head-on, from the first conversation with every carrier at the table.

What Insurance Sees as a Problem, Holly Sees as the Point

Every month, Holly's brokers sent her a claims report. One line in it never changed. "We have one person on our plan that is half our claims," she said, "and that's really tough, because insurance carriers look at that and say, 'It doesn't look good.'"

Holly read the same number differently. "That somebody is taking care of themselves," she said. "Insurance is trying to look at what you're using, and I'm looking at the fact that I need people to take care of themselves."

That distinction was what let her hold the line the year before, when a carrier tried to raise the specialist copay to $75. "I was like, absolutely not. People won't go to specialists anymore," she said. "They expect a $50, $60 copay. But $75?" Her brokers remembered that fight going into this year's renewal, and it kept the same increase from resurfacing. The copay that did go through moved from $25.50 to $30.60, a jump Holly could accept because it tracked what employees already expected to pay.

The logic behind both decisions was the same. A copay increase that looks small on a spreadsheet can be large enough to change behavior, and if it stops someone from seeing a specialist, the cost does not disappear. It shows up later, in a more expensive claim, or in an employee who is worse off. Holly's resistance to the $75 copay came from a judgment about what her own workforce would actually do, not from a tactic aimed at the carrier, and she was confident enough in it to hold the line.

Her confidence came from somewhere closer to home than a claims report.

She Uses the Plan She Is Negotiating

Holly does not just administer NOABRANDS' health plan. She uses it. "I really use the insurance," she said.

That distinction changed what she was actually negotiating. Instead of debating copay figures in the abstract, she tested every number against her own point of care. "When I'm looking at care for myself, I am always keeping in mind, well, if you raise this, I'm not going to do it," she said. "I can't imagine somebody on my line, who gets paid hourly, paying $75 to go see a specialist if I'm not going to do it." An hourly employee's tolerance for a specialist copay was not a number Holly had to estimate. It was a number she checked against her own behavior first, and against what happens when that threshold is crossed: the appointment gets skipped, not just delayed.

That gave her a specific way of explaining plan changes when she rolled them out, one built on comparison rather than reassurance. When she raised a cost or a copay, she could tell employees where that number sat against benefits offered by other manufacturing companies, and be honest about it in both directions: below that benchmark for some benefits, in line with it for others. Comparing against manufacturing peers rather than the market at large answered a more useful question than whether a number felt high: whether NOABRANDS was still competitive for the kind of employee it was trying to keep, in the industry where it actually competed for them.

Holly was direct about why this mattered to her, beyond the negotiation. "My job, or at least how I think of it, is to provide you something that gives you the resources to take care of your being," she said. Knowing what employees would actually do at $75 was not a negotiating advantage she happened to have. It came from paying attention to her own workforce in the first place.

That same firsthand comparison was also what let her see through the most common misconception her employees brought into open enrollment.

The Most Expensive Plan Is Not the Best Plan

After cutting out-of-network benefits the year before, Holly used the 2026 redesign to give employees an actual choice. NOABRANDS ended up offering two networks: one with lower copays, lower coinsurance, and a lower share of the premium, the other costing more but not requiring referrals for specialist visits. "It gave people a choice," she said. "You could compare what works for you."

What she found was that most employees never made that comparison at all. "I think the thing that I still struggle with, with my employees, is that they're just like, 'The most expensive plan is the best plan,'" Holly said. She saw it differently: the best plan was whichever one matched how an employee and their dependents actually used care, not the one with the highest price tag.

One employee's decision showed what it looked like to reason the other way. Debating between a high-deductible plan and a more traditional one with copays and coinsurance, the employee chose the high-deductible option, not because it was cheaper on paper, but because they rarely went to the doctor and were contributing to a health savings account that would cover the cost if they ever needed to. "That person really looked at the plans," Holly said, describing two follow-up meetings the employee requested beyond the standard benefits presentation.

Holly went through the same reasoning for herself. Choosing between the two networks meant choosing between a lower-cost plan that required a referral to see a specialist and a higher-cost plan that did not. Getting a referral is an extra step, one Holly herself called "kind of a pain," but she picked the plan that required it anyway, because her primary care physician of ten years made that step easy in practice. The plan also carried a lower out-of-pocket maximum, four thousand dollars against five. Because NOABRANDS switched plans partway through the year rather than at the start of a new plan cycle, the money she had already spent toward her old plan's maximum carried over and counted toward the new one too, putting her a thousand dollars closer to hitting the lower cap for the rest of the year. The saving came less from the premium than from a structure that matched how she actually used care, helped along by a mid-year plan switch that happened to work in her favor.

The Plan Can’t Please Everyone, and Doesn’t Try To

Every open enrollment forces choices between competing employee preferences. Asked how she decides what to prioritize, Holly was direct: she can't please everyone. "And if I was trying to, I would be so much more stressed out," she said.

What she does instead is treat only a small number of things as fixed, and leave the rest open to trade. The $75 copay fight was one of them, non-negotiable because it touched what her hourly employees could actually afford, not just what looked reasonable on paper. Referral requirements, network breadth, whether a given voluntary benefit made the cut: those were negotiable, because none of them determined whether someone could still get the care they needed. The difference between what Holly held firm on and what she let go of came from the same population knowledge that shaped the negotiation itself.

Knowing where to hold firm and where to bend still had to be explained to the people affected by both kinds of decisions.

Explaining a Plan Is Not the Same as Rolling One Out

NOABRANDS did not send employees a recorded video and an enrollment deadline. "We are not the people who are going to send out our open enrollment video and just go, 'Here, watch this and make your elections by such and such a time,'" Holly said.

Part of the reason was the makeup of her workforce. "English is the second language for much of our workforce population," she said. "So we arrange for someone to come in for Spanish speaking employees that can explain the plan." A Polish-speaking office manager covered a second group directly. Medical terminology is difficult to parse even in a first language, and Holly treated a second-language workforce as a reason to add a live interpreter, not a reason to keep the material simple.

The format mattered as much as the language. Holly ran in-person meetings, on top of the video, because being in a room lets people ask questions. "The goal is to make sure you understand what you're being offered so you can choose what's right for you and your dependents, period," she said. "So come see us. Bother us multiple times. That's what we're here for."

That openness extended to the negotiation itself. Holly did not just announce the new plan. She explained how it came about. "We can be very transparent about how we went through negotiations, and what the changes are," she said. She could only do that because she understood the negotiation well enough to narrate it honestly. Someone explaining a plan they had not negotiated themselves would not have that same level of detail to offer.

Holly was direct about why she treats this as worth the effort. "There's two things you don't mess with," she said. "You don't mess with someone's pay, and you don't mess with somebody's benefits." Both affect an employee's income and their access to care directly, and Holly ran the rollout accordingly, less like a compliance requirement and more like a conversation she owed her employees.

The response suggested that it registered. "I think it landed with the team fairly well," Holly said. "Getting a few people that came and thanked us was really nice."

The Same Knowledge, Twice

Holly connected the two sides of this herself, the negotiation and the trust that followed it. Going into a renewal knowing her staff well, she said, changes what happens at the table: "You go in with understanding. Hey, these are important things. Here's the things I can compromise on. So you already know that going in. And I think it just makes it a little bit easier. It can make it go a little bit faster in some cases," she said. The claims data that shaped every carrier's quote was the same information that told her which copay increases her employees would tolerate and which they wouldn't. The habit of testing plan design against her own use of the insurance was what let her explain the results in person instead of through a recorded video. None of it was assembled after the renewal letter arrived. It was already there, in a claims report, in her own use of the plan.

Holly runs HR at NOABRANDS alone, with an office manager handling administration alongside her. The claims report she reads every month, the in-person meetings she holds in two languages, the plan comparisons she works through for herself before she asks anyone else to work through their own, all of it rests on one person holding both the negotiating knowledge and the relationship with employees. Whether that holds together once it's split across a larger HR function, several people instead of one, is not a question this renewal answers.

What it does answer is narrower. A hard number and a workforce's trust in the outcome did not come from two different efforts here. They came from the same one.

Practical Takeaways: Negotiating on Knowledge, Not Just Numbers

The benefits renewal Holly Lutz, Director of Human Resources for the US Division of NOABRANDS, walked through hinged on knowledge built long before the carrier's letter arrived, the kind that shapes both what HR can win at the table and what employees are willing to accept afterward. That combination is rarely treated as one responsibility. Most HR leaders separate negotiating a good number from explaining it well, when the two actually depend on exactly the same groundwork.

1. What does it mean for HR to “know” a workforce well enough to negotiate a benefits renewal on that basis?

It means having claims, usage, and tolerance data specific enough to act on before the renewal letter arrives, not general benchmarking. Holly Lutz (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) could price an alternative funding structure and split a cost increase unevenly across coverage tiers during the company’s 2026 renewal, because she knew claims concentration and enrollment numbers. Without that specificity, HR is negotiating on the carrier's terms, reacting to whatever number arrives rather than shaping it in advance.

2. Why does direct renegotiation with an incumbent benefits carrier typically produce only small concessions, compared to running a full market re-shop?

An incumbent carrier negotiating directly controls the floor entirely; nothing forces it to move further than it wants to. Holly Lutz's (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) direct renegotiation in 2026 brought a 26% increase down to 23%, a gain of three points. Going to market, collecting competing quotes and pricing a real alternative, brought the same renewal to roughly 11%. If a carrier isn't losing anything by holding firm, direct pressure alone has a low ceiling.

3. What's the first sign that HR is negotiating a benefits renewal without the population knowledge it needs?

The clearest sign is having to gather workforce data in response to the renewal letter rather than already having it. For Holly Lutz (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS), pricing a credible alternative structure and getting real competing quotes for the company’s 2026 renewal required knowing exactly what the company paid per employee, per tier, in advance. If that data has to be assembled after the number lands, HR is starting the negotiation already behind.

4. What happens when a copay or plan design change is decided on cost alone, without checking it against actual employee behavior?

The saved cost can resurface later, at a higher price. Holly Lutz (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) refused a carrier's push to raise a specialist copay to $75 because she judged that hourly employees would simply stop going. A copay increase that stops someone from seeing a specialist doesn't eliminate the cost; it defers it into a more expensive claim, or a worse health outcome, later.

5. How does treating population knowledge as a year-round asset change what HR's job looks like outside of renewal season?

It turns HR into an ongoing data function, not an annual negotiator. Holly Lutz's (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) brokers sent her a claims report every month, giving her a continuous read on where the workforce's costs were concentrated. Separately, her own regular use of the plan gave her a firsthand check on what a given cost or copay would actually do to someone's behavior. Together, those two factors meant she was negotiating and communicating from a position built well before any renewal letter arrived.

6. How should an HR leader decide which benefits costs are non-negotiable and which are open to trade-off?

The distinction should rest on whether a cost change would stop someone from seeking the care they need. Holly Lutz (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) refused a $75 specialist copay outright because it would have changed behavior, but treated referral requirements and network breadth as negotiable, since neither determined whether an employee could still access care. Costs tied directly to care-seeking behavior should be treated as fixed; costs tied to convenience or plan structure have more room to move.

7. What renewal-negotiation numbers should HR leaders track to know whether they're negotiating from strength or from the carrier's terms?

Three figures matter. First, the gap between direct-renegotiation gains and market re-shop gains: Holly Lutz (Director of Human Resources – US Division, NOABRANDS) got three points of relief on a 26% increase directly, and roughly eight more by going to market. Second, claims concentration: one employee accounted for half of NOABRANDS' claims, a figure every carrier priced against. Third, how evenly the increase lands: rather than splitting it 50-50, NOABRANDS varied the split by coverage tier based on enrollment. Together, these show whether an outcome reflects real leverage or just what the carrier chose to offer.

Closing Reflection

Every lever available in a benefits renewal, market pressure, cost-sharing structure, where to hold firm on a copay, depends on the same asset: a current, granular picture of how the workforce actually uses its coverage. That picture cannot be built in the weeks after a renewal letter arrives. Treating it as something to assemble once a year, rather than maintain continuously, is what leaves leverage on the table before a negotiation even starts.

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To hear how the full conversation played out, listen to Holly's podcast episode.

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