The Hidden Financial Risk Eating Away at Family Wealth

Why Healthcare Navigation Belongs in Every Wealth Planning Strategy

Below is an article by Emry Health Senior Vice President, Strategic Business Devlopmenet Lindsay Loomis in WealthManagement.com

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You wouldn’t manage a complex estate without legal counsel. You wouldn’t navigate a tax issue without your CPA. So why are so many high-net-worth individuals going it alone when it comes to one of their biggest—and most overlooked—financial risks?

Healthcare.

It’s not just a personal issue—it’s a financial one. For affluent families, unmanaged healthcare can quietly erode wealth, consume time, and create avoidable stress. As a healthcare advocate and former insurance insider, I’ve seen this firsthand. Families are unknowingly overpaying, missing coverage opportunities, or wasting time trying to coordinate care across a fragmented system.

These aren’t isolated cases. They’re symptoms of a system that’s grown more complex, more administratively burdensome, and more expensive every year.

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The Real Cost of Complexity

While the U.S. healthcare system delivers world-class care in many areas, it’s also one of the most administratively complex systems in the world. Pricing is inconsistent. Coverage is difficult to interpret. And billing is often riddled with errors—some estimates suggest up to 85% of medical claims contain mistakes.

For high-income individuals, the response is often to pay a bill just to get it off their plate. But that approach often leads to unnecessary financial loss. Whether it’s a lab test coded incorrectly, an out-of-network bill that could be negotiated, or a denied claim that should be appealed, these issues compound quickly.

We see families lose tens of thousands of dollars per year this way. And that’s before factoring in the time they’ve spent chasing down documentation, calling providers, or trying to understand their explanation of benefits.

Even the most organized, successful families often spend upward of 100 hours a year dealing with healthcare logistics. That includes tracking claims, coordinating care between providers, securing second opinions, managing reimbursements, and trying to interpret increasingly complex billing systems.

This is time that could be better spent on business, family or philanthropy. Delegating these tasks to a trusted advocate not only saves money—it reclaims time and reduces stress.

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What Healthcare Advocacy Actually Means

Healthcare concierge advocacy is about managing the infrastructure around care—not delivering it. We don’t replace your doctors—we partner with them. While your clinical team focuses on diagnosis and treatment, advocates work behind the scenes to ensure your benefits are working for you, your bills are accurate, and your coverage is optimized.

At Emry, that means helping clients choose the right insurance plan, coordinating care across providers, managing claims and appeals, tracking healthcare spend, and negotiating costs when appropriate. It’s administrative, but high-stakes—and it requires deep expertise.

A strong advocacy team isn’t just well-meaning support staff. It’s typically composed of seasoned professionals: attorneys, health benefits experts, and medical billing specialists who know how to navigate the system from the inside out.

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The Financial Planning Blind Spot

For families who already rely on attorneys for estate matters, CPAs for tax strategy, and advisors for financial planning, this fills a critical gap. It’s not just about solving problems when they happen—it’s about preventing them from happening in the first place.

Healthcare should be treated as another core component of wealth planning. It’s a blind spot. And for families who’ve worked hard to build and preserve wealth, it’s one that deserves a solution.

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A New Standard of Support

Healthcare navigation is becoming a critical service among multi-family offices, estate planning teams, and private client advisors. It reflects a shift in mindset—one that recognizes that simplifying complexity is part of safeguarding wealth.

Affluent individuals don’t need to accept confusion or inefficiency in their healthcare experience. And advisors don’t need to have all the answers—they just need the right partners.

Wealth can solve a lot of problems, but if there’s one thing more important than wealth, it’s health. Without it, everything you’ve built loses its value.

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