Wisconsin’s Workforce Challenge Isn’t Just About Labor. It’s About Healthcare Accessibility and Affordability
By Curt Kubiak, President and CEO
Wisconsin employers are navigating workforce challenges from nearly every angle.
Our labor force participation has declined for decades, even as businesses compete harder than ever to attract and retain talent. Wisconsin’s median age is now 40.1, older than the national average, and nearly 75% of employers report they cannot find the skilled workers they need.
These trends in labor growth are important, but factors affecting healthcare affordability and accessibility are also impacting Wisconsin’s existing workforce and deserve greater attention.
When healthcare is too expensive, difficult to navigate, or hard to access, it affects far more than benefit costs. Rising healthcare costs and access barriers influence hiring, retention, productivity, and business investment. Healthcare affordability and accessibility can be directly linked to Wisconsin’s broader workforce strength and economic competitiveness.
Healthcare Costs are Affecting Businesses
Organizations like Competitive Wisconsin have reinforced this view through initiatives like BE BOLD, which focuses on strengthening Wisconsin’s long-term competitiveness by addressing interconnected priorities, including workforce, healthcare, housing, education, and economic infrastructure.
Their work underscores an important reality: workforce challenges cannot be solved in silos. Wisconsin’s ability to compete depends on building stronger systems that support employers, their employees, and the communities in which they live.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce also highlighted healthcare costs as one of several pressures affecting the state’s competitiveness. These concerns reflect what many employers already know firsthand: when healthcare becomes less affordable or less accessible, it becomes harder to sustain business growth and attract talent.
For employers, this can mean:
- Slower wage growth
- Increased employee cost-sharing for healthcare benefits
- Reduced flexibility for future investment
- Workforce disruption when employees delay or avoid care because of cost or limited access
Wisconsin’s Healthcare Workforce
Wisconsin is home to outstanding healthcare providers and systems that are working hard to serve communities in an increasingly demanding environment.
The state’s healthcare workforce has grown in recent years. Providers, policymakers, and educators have expanded training pathways, strengthened team-based care models, and leveraged technology to better support both patients and clinicians.
This progress matters, and it should be recognized.
At the same time, demand for care continues to rise, particularly as Wisconsin’s population ages. That means even meaningful workforce growth may struggle to keep pace without broader system improvements.
Healthcare professionals face growing complexity. Administrative requirements, payer processes, regulatory expectations, and system fragmentation can all create barriers that pull valuable time and resources away from patient care.
This challenge is not caused by any one stakeholder. It is the result of a highly complex healthcare ecosystem that requires thoughtful, collaborative improvements.
Everyone Needs to Work Together
Employers, healthcare providers, and policymakers all share a common goal: making sure Wisconsin remains a place where businesses can thrive, and people can access affordable, high-quality healthcare when and where they need it.
That means focusing on solutions that strengthen the system for everyone:
- Supporting healthcare workforce sustainability
- Simplifying administrative complexity
- Expanding access to high-value healthcare
- Helping employers create benefit plans that leverage high-value healthcare options
- Improving care navigation and helping employees become better healthcare consumers
When employers can better manage healthcare costs, they are better positioned to invest in their employees. When providers can operate in a more efficient system, they can focus more fully on patient care. When employees can access affordable, high-quality healthcare, businesses and communities both benefit.
Building a Stronger Wisconsin Workforce Starts with Accessibility and Affordability
In healthcare, doing more of the same will never be enough. We need to disrupt the current model to build sustainable systems that strengthen long-term affordability, accessibility, competitiveness, and economic resilience—and healthcare affordability is a critical piece of that foundation.
Wisconsin has made progress, but there is more work to do. By working together to reduce complexity, strengthen workforce capacity, and improve healthcare value, Wisconsin can create an environment where employers, employees, and healthcare organizations all succeed.
I love the Badger State. It’s a wonderful place to live, and I believe we have the opportunity to make it even better for employers, employees, and the communities we call home. By making healthcare more accessible and affordable, we can strengthen our ability to attract new talent and retain the employees Wisconsin businesses depend on.
We all have a role in shaping the future of Wisconsin’s workforce. We can choose to move it forward or allow inaction to hold it back.
What are you doing to make healthcare more accessible and affordable in Wisconsin? Reach out at OnWisconsinHealthcare@the-alliance.org.
Curt Kubiak is the President and CEO of The Alliance, a non-for-profit cooperative that helps employers save money on their healthcare spend. After an early career in the manufacturing sector, Kubiak has spent nearly two decades as an executive in the healthcare industry in Wisconsin.
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