Employers know exactly what their health plan costs. What they usually don’t know is what it costs them when an employee needs care and doesn’t get it because a credit check got in the way of the bill.

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That happens more often than most benefits teams realize. In the past 12 months, 36% of adults said they skipped or put off care because of what it would cost, and among uninsured adults under 65, that number was 75%, according to “Americans’ Challenges with Health Care Costs,” a September report from research, polling and news firm KFF.

It’s a cost that rarely shows up in the budget conversation, said Augusto Ruiz-Eldredge, chief operating officer of PayMedix, the parent company of TempoPay, a healthcare financing platform offered through employer and health plan benefits.

“The gap purchasers often miss is between an individual or family having health insurance coverage and how they will pay their share when care is needed,” he said.

That gap keeps widening as out-of-pocket costs keep climbing for healthcare consumers in the United States, Ruiz-Eldredge said.

His point lined up with a theme in PYMNTS Intelligence’s September Embedded Finance Tracker®, “Making Health and Wellness Benefits Perform.” A benefits program is only worth what participants can actually use, not what’s been budgeted for it.

The Tracker made the case in infrastructure terms: real-time eligibility, automatic controls and a single platform for every benefit type.

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