INSIGHTS
Ideas and analysis on employer healthcare, plan design, and benefits leadership—created for teams that want to understand their options before renewal season arrives.
The Medicare benchmark is the most useful number in employer healthcare — and the one most brokers never surface. Here's why the incentive structure keeps it hidden, and what changes when you see it.
Level-funded, partially self-insured, reference-based pricing, captives — the terminology is loose and the risk profiles are very different. A plain-language map of the options and when each one makes sense.
7 min readSpecialty pharmacy, inpatient facility, and outpatient surgery account for the majority of cost variance between high-performing and average employer plans. What each one looks like in the data.
6 min readReference-based pricing gets a bad reputation because it's been implemented badly. When it's designed well, employees keep access to the same providers — and the employer stops overpaying for the same care.
5 min readA benchmark report is only useful if you know what to look for. We walk through the key ratios, what a meaningful gap looks like, and the questions to ask before you act on the data.
8 min readHigh headcount, shift-based workforces, and thin margins make every claims dollar visible — but the same characteristics that create cost pressure also create the conditions for meaningful savings.
5 min readWe publish a few times a month — no filler, no vendor pitches. Just the data and what it means for employers like yours.
