Grieving – The Health Care Blog

New Bereavement Cost Calculator shows that grief is expensive

Sep 23, 2025

by EMMA PAYNE

Grief is expensive. In addition to the significant human impacts, research shows that bereavement leads to a 20%-30% increase in health care utilization.

Grief is also common. While we may not like to talk about it, 37% of Americans are grieving a recent death. The U.S. averaged 3.26 million deaths per year over the last five years and data suggests that an average of nine people grieve a single death. The CDC started measuring bereavement for the first time in 2021, but most health plans aren’t yet measuring the incidence or cost of grief.

So we decided to take a look. Here’s just some of what we found.

When a member is bereaved, health plans — especially those serving older adults — see significant jumps in utilization and costs across multiple claims categories. Examples include:

● 51% increase in Emergency Department visits and 43% increase in hospitalizations for bereaved spouses whose partners died in hospital
● 67% higher risk level for psychiatric hospitalization in the first year of bereavement for parents who have lost a child
● 74% of husbands and 67% of wives are hospitalized at least once in the nine years following the death of their spouse
● 463% higher odds of antidepressant use for people who have a prolonged grief disorder diagnosis

These increases lead to escalating claims costs that add up quickly, especially in populations 65+. But what are these costs? And what can insurers do to mitigate them?

To make these hidden costs visible, my team at Help Texts created a tool that health plans can use to model bereavement’s financial impacts. With just member numbers, the Bereavement Cost Calculator from Help Texts will estimate a health plan’s:

● Projected Per Member Per Month (PMPM) cost increase after bereavement
● Total cost impact of grief when no intervention is provided
● Estimated savings when plans provide Help Texts’ clinically sound, scalable, grief support for bereaved members

Consider a Medicare Advantage Plan with 250K members ages 65+. It should expect:
● Potential year one cost reduction (with intervention): $22.8M
● 11,500 members to be grieving the death of a partner or child
● 81,500 members to be grieving other losses (eg. parent, sibling, friend)
● Average PMPM increase (without intervention): $120
● Total estimated year one cost impact (without intervention): $134M *

What can a health plan do to save money and improve care and outcomes for its members? The numbers are powerful, showing that grief is expensive, but also that bereavement presents a clear opportunity to provide an impactful upstream intervention that can save millions, while also caring for people during what is often the loneliest time in their lives.

Help Texts is a clinically sound, scalable, bereavement intervention. With subscribers in 59 countries and all 50 states, Help Texts delivers affordable, multilingual grief support via text message. With extraordinary acceptability (95%) and 6-month retention (90%) rates, Help Texts’ light-weight solution makes it easy for health plans and others to improve health and community outcomes, while also realizing significant cost savings for those in their care.

Health Plans, particularly Medicare Advantage plans, can use the new bereavement cost calculator from Help Texts to estimate the true cost of bereavement and their cost savings when grief support is provided. The Bereavement Cost Calculator from Help Texts uncovers the savings potential when caring for grieving members. In less than a minute, you can start to see how much bereavement is costing, and how much could be saved by supporting members grieving the loss of a loved one.

Because the true cost of bereavement isn’t only emotional, it’s also financial. And for health plans, addressing both is the smartest investment you can make.

Emma Payne is the CEO of Help Texts

What AI and Grief-bots Can Teach Us About Supporting Grieving People

Jun 10, 2025

By MELISSA LUNARDINI

The Rise of Digital Grief Support

We’re witnessing a shift in how we process one of humanity’s most universal experiences: grief. Several companies have emerged in recent years to develop grief-related technology, where users can interact with AI versions of deceased loved ones or turn to general AI platforms for grief support.

This isn’t just curiosity, it’s a response to a genuine lack of human connection and support. The rise of grief-focused AI reveals something uncomfortable about our society: people are turning to machines because they’re not getting what they need from the humans around them.

Why People Are Choosing Digital Over Human Support

The grief tech industry is ramping up, with MIT Technology Review reporting that “at least half a dozen companies” in China are offering AI services for interacting with deceased loved ones. Companies like Character.AI, Nomi, Replika, StoryFile, and HereAfter AI offer users the ability to create and engage with the “likeness” of deceased persons, while many other users use AI as a way to quickly normalize and seek answers for their grief. This digital migration isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s a direct response to the failures of our current support systems:

Social Discomfort: Our grief-illiterate society struggles with how to respond to loss. Friends and family often disappear within weeks, leaving mourners isolated when they need support, especially months later.
Professional Barriers: Traditional grief counseling is expensive, with long wait times. Many therapists lack proper grief training, with some reporting no grief-related education in their programs. This leaves people without accessible, qualified support when they need it most.
Fear of Judgment: People often feel safer sharing intimate grief experiences with AI than with humans who might judge, offer unwanted advice, or grow uncomfortable with the intensity of their grief.

The ELIZA Effect

To understand why grief-focused AI is succeeding, we must look back to 1966, when the first AI-companion program called ELIZA was developed. Created by MIT’s Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA simulated conversation using simple pattern matching, specifically mimicking a Rogerian psychotherapist using person-centered therapy.

Rogerian therapy was perfect for this experiment because it relies heavily on mirroring what the person says. The AI companion’s role was simple: reflect back what the person said with questions like “How does that make you feel?” or “Tell me more about that.” Weizenbaum was surprised that people formed deep emotional connections with this simple program, confiding their most intimate thoughts and feelings. This phenomenon became known as the “ELIZA effect”.

ELIZA worked not because it was sophisticated but because it embodied the core principles of effective emotional support, something we as a society can learn from (or in some cases relearn).

What AI and Grief-bots Get Right

Modern grief-focused AI succeeds for the same reasons ELIZA did, but with enhanced capabilities. Here’s what AI is doing right:

Non-Judgmental Presence: AI doesn’t recoil from grief’s intensity. It won’t tell you to “move on,” suggest you should be “over it by now,” or change the subject when your pain becomes uncomfortable. It simply witnesses and reflects.
Unconditional Availability: Grief doesn’t follow business hours. It strikes at 3 AM on a Tuesday, during family gatherings, while you’re at work, or on a grocery run. AI works 24/7, providing instant support by quickly normalizing common grief experiences like “I just saw someone who looked like my mom in the grocery store, am I going mad?” AI’s response demonstrates effective validation: “You’re not going mad at all. This is actually a very common experience when grieving someone close to you. Your brain is wired to recognize familiar patterns, especially faces of people who were important to you… This is completely normal. Your mind is still processing your loss, and these moments of recognition show just how deeply your mom is still with you in your memories and awareness.” Simple, on-demand validation helps grievers instantly feel normal and understood.
Pure Focus on the Griever: AI doesn’t hijack your story to share its own experiences. It doesn’t offer unsolicited advice about what you “should” do or grow weary of hearing the same story repeatedly. Its attention is entirely yours.
Validation Without Agenda: Unlike humans, who may rush to make you feel better (often for their own comfort), AI validates emotions without trying to fix or change them. It normalizes grief without pathologizing it.
Privacy and Safety: AI holds space for the “good, bad, and ugly” parts of grief confidentially. There’s no fear of social judgment, no worry about burdening someone, no concern about saying the “wrong” thing.
No Strings Attached: AI doesn’t need emotional reciprocity. It won’t eventually need comforting, grow tired of your grief, or abandon you if your healing takes longer than expected.