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An Interview with Derek Winn of BBG

Derek Winn is the 2020 BenefitsPRO Broker of the Year and Director of Sales and Senior Consultant for Business Benefits Group (BBG). I've had the pleasure of talking with Derek about healthcare purchasing, innovation, teaching, learning, and new models. Derek has a talent for storytelling, analogies, and likes classic pickup trucks. BBG is also our first client to subscribe to our innovative healthcare benefits benchmarking tool. We’re so glad to have the Olavi Group's benchmarking tool at our ...

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An Interview with Zero CEO James Millaway

    An interview with James Millaway, CEO of Zero, a firm that offers $0 out-of-pocket care to employees of self-insured firms.   Tell me about Zero's mission and history. The legacy healthcare system we have to come to rely on in the U.S. is simply not sustainable. Costs continue to rise, quality varies widely, and the member experience leaves much to be desired. Healthcare should be affordable and accessible and people deserve a world-class experience. While our p ...

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The Case for Better Benchmarking

The Firestick has 11 buttons, with one huge on/off button. It's a joy to use. If simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, unnecessary complexity is crude and confusing, lazy or purposeful, part of the conspiracy against the outsiders. The age of the metaphorical 3 remotes with 150 buttons of equal sizes still exists. Benchmarking healthcare benefits can cost $800/month for subscriptions, or thousands to wade through 50-100 page PDFs with details on pet insurance--very fine print compared to th ...

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September’s Index

As a nod to the clever and entertaining Harper's index, here is September's healthcare and finance index.   The decline in 2nd quarter hospital admissions for HCA Healthcare: 20%HCA is one of the largest hospitals in the US with 186 hospitals and 122 surgery centers The decline in emergency room visits in the same quarter: 33% The number of times Covid-19 was mentioned in HCA's second-quarter earnings report: 70 The 2nd quarter increase in payments per stay: 10% The fiscal ...

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GoodRx’s IPO and the $450 Story

Many great founders have started companies after an annoying experience. Netflix’s lightbulb moment began with founder Reed Hastings waiting in line at Blockbuster to pay $40 after losing Apollo 13. For Doug Hirsch, co-founder of GoodRx, it was a $450 prescription back in 2010--years earlier he followed his parents’ advice on getting a job with good insurance. He learned price variation was more than theory. Doug went from pharmacy to pharmacy comparing prices. Even with good insurance, prices w ...