In September 2026, The Guardian reported that Starbucks workers responding to a Starbucks Workers United survey faced sharp increases in their health-insurance contributions for cover beginning on 1 October. More than 130 workers from union and non-union stores took part. The newspaper described individual employees who expected to drop coverage or considered taking another job because of the cost. The evidence is serious as testimony, but the survey is

The scale described by the review In September 2026, the UK government published the Keep Britain Working review update, which estimates the annual cost of health-related economic inactivity at about £212 billion and says roughly 300,000 people with a health condition leave work each year. The document, published on 23 September, breaks the estimate into lost output, health-related benefits, unpaid-care effects and additional NHS costs. It is an analytical

In March 2026, Vitality, a member of Discovery Limited of South Africa, announced that its US acquisition of Ramp Health would combine an AI-enabled health platform with onsite clinical, coaching and workplace-safety services for employers. The transaction brings together two forms of intervention that are often purchased separately. Vitality contributes behavioural science, incentives, data analytics and personalised health-risk insights. Ramp Health adds clinicians, coaches and safety professionals who can