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An Interview with Dr. Eric Bricker

by Thought Leadership

Dr. Eric Bricker, MD is a physician, a co-founder of Compass Professional Health Services, now part of Alight, and the founder of both AHealthcareZ and Texas Family Insurance. His content is rich and deep and he's a must-follow for those in healthcare.Q: Tell me about AHealthcareZ and what you're working on this month. AHealthcareZ posts 3-5 educational videos per week on healthcare finance. I have several thousands of email subscribers and close to 100,000 viewers on Linkedin. It’s a fantastic ...

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Financial Broccoli

by Benefits ToolsHealth Savings AccountsInvestingThought Leadership

Kellogg tells you their cereal is natural and has whole grains. There are no broccoli lobbyists or marketers (other than moms). Some good things do need reminders. One trigger for some of my favorite healthcare and financial housekeeping tips starts with a fresh door: a new job. Switching Jobs Over a 10 year period, an employee's biggest medical expense is likely payroll contributions toward premiums (median: $100 per month; $400 for families)source: data from over 500 large employers, The 201 ...

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Valuing a Piece of Americana

by Health Savings AccountsIndustry TrendsInvestingThought Leadership

Baseball cards are part of Americana. The slotted binders, stats, and bike rides to shops evoke nostalgia too. The investment merit of cards fit is another question. An index of the rarest of cards may have outperformed the S&P 500 by 2.3x over the last 10 years but that's a small niche with gated access. Though investment returns on cards and collectibles are hard to find details on, they lag bonds, stocks, and real estate. To sell cards is to accept the current market value. An extra dos ...

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Price and Value

by Uncategorized

The tension between price and value is familiar. We want the $14k Ford Fiesta price but the Tesla Model S product. We usually get what we pay for. Employers promote generous healthcare benefits, ones with little advertised friction (e.g., low deductibles). Generosity is vague. Is a $1,500 deductible good or bad? Our only guide is usually our past experience, which is not the purest of benchmarks. There are also premium contributions we make through payroll. The biggest expense in a given year ...

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Arbitrage and the Advice We Give

by Benefits ToolsHDHPsInvesting

In March the gap between London and New York gold prices jumped to $60 per ounce, 40 times the typical spread of $1.50 per ounce. In times of fear, investors prefer to have their gold in New York. These extreme arbitragearbitrage: to simultaneously buy low and sell high; everyone's dream. opportunities have short windows. Arbitrage is one of my favorite words and economic ideas. Other dislocations in prices are less pronounced but more enduring. Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw said that "a ...