Self-Funded

"When you see $6.5 billion in healthcare fraud, we all end up absorbing that in the commercial market." In this episode of Last Month in Healthcare , Producer Nathaniel and I sat down with Sid Sinha, founder and CEO of Avant/Nara Health, to break down the biggest healthcare news stories of June 2026. We started by looking at the DOJ's massive $6.5 billion healthcare fraud crackdown a...

"Fee-for-service has led to transactional primary care where providers have 10 or 15 minutes to code as much as they can just to keep the doors open. We’ve moved away from the idea of primary care as the quarterback of the entire health ecosystem." My guest this week is Matt Taylor , VP of Sales at Castlight . Having spent his career navigating the complex landscape of health plans, tele...

"The most unused cash in the country right now is the money you're wasting on healthcare... If you save a million dollars a year, that's $20 million in market cap." Is your company treating its healthcare spend like a business strategy, or are you just writing a blank check to the major insurance carriers every year? In this episode, I was (finally) joined by Mark Cuban , Ann Lew...

"There's no reason why I should be able to do an infusion for 50% of the cost of what it's currently being allowed at. We've seen allowed amounts between $57,000 and $80,000 for Keytruda. I typically can have that in the home at $29,000." My guest this week is Jake Velie , CEO and co-founder of National Integrative Health (NIH) . After spending the first half of his career in...

"We did this survey with a third-party consulting group who talked to 2,000 brokers. Their perception was that 25% of bills are going to be balance bills; it's actually 3%." Is Reference-Based Pricing (RBP) still something that just creates endless problems for HR? My guest this week is Jeff Bak , CEO of Imagine360 . Jeff brings 30 years of healthcare and private equity experience to...

"The average marketplace deductible grew by about $1,000 per person in 2026. Premium payments increased by an average of 58%... We might be seeing the death throes of the fully insured market." Welcome back to Last Month in Healthcare ! This month, Spencer, Nathaniel, and special guest Jonathan Lopez break down the most impactful healthcare headlines and regulatory shifts from May 2026. The episod...

"Within five years of calling us charlatans, that hospital system was sued for multiple millions of dollars by their participants... You can go from charlatan to change agent fast." Is history about to repeat itself in the health benefits world? My guest this week is Jay Gepfert , Managing Partner of Culpepper RFP .  Jay spent his corporate career on the retirement and 401(k) side of the...

"Insurance is there for when you're sick or when something goes incredibly wrong. It's not there for prevention." The traditional healthcare system is designed to treat you when you are sick. You go to a doctor for 15 minutes, get a basic blood panel, and if you are within the "reference range," you are told you are fine. The goal of this system is to get you from -1 ba...

"To quote my business partner, a broker makes you broker." To celebrate the 5-year and 250th-episode anniversary of the podcast, we recorded a special live panel in front of an audience featuring three of the most forward-thinking minds in the benefits space: Chris Hamilton (Hotchkiss Insurance), Taylor Rogers (CCIG), and Seth Denson (Acrisure). In this "State of the Union" epi...

"If we can do it for Whole Foods, which is a very large organization, why can't we do this for other employers?" Is the era of relying on national, opaque "BUCA" networks finally coming to an end? My guests this week are Blake Allison , CEO of Employers Health Network (EHN), and Philip Eaves , from Ascension. Together, they break down the exact blueprint they used to build...

"Employers are at a point where they want to help create that ideal healthcare system, not the one that they have been dictated to." Is your company's health plan actually keeping your employees healthy, or is it just waiting for them to get sick? My guest this week is Ben Miller , Chief Revenue Officer at Premise Health , the nation's largest direct healthcare provider operating...

Welcome back to Last Month in Healthcare! This month, Spencer and Nathaniel sit down without a guest to unpack the biggest healthcare headlines and regulatory shifts from April 2026. From state-level crackdowns on PBMs to a surprising loophole that allows urban hospitals to siphon rural hospital aid, the guys dissect the policy changes and market moves that are actively reshaping the industry. The...

"I would rather take this risk because I will never give another dime to a fully-insured carrier as long as I live." In an era of double-digit medical trend and skyrocketing fully-insured renewals, is the traditional insurance broker obsolete? This week, my guest is John Kountz , a benefits consultant at Frost Insurance who believes that the days of the "renewal carousel" - sho...

"I'm going to leave the ladder, I'm going to leave the window open, I'm going to leave the lights on." This week on the podcast, I am joined by Rob Gelb , CEO of Vālenz. Rob has led Vālenz through an era of explosive growth, transforming the company from a 60-person shop in 2018 into a 550-employee powerhouse driving innovation in the self-funded healthcare space. But this ep...

"We are not going after the high. What we're going for is symptom relief. Based on our research, employers are going to be saving $5,000 per participant per year." Is it time for employers to start covering medical cannabis? My guest this week is Emily Fisher , Founder of LeafWell . As a stage 4 breast cancer patient, Emily experienced firsthand the therapeutic benefits of cannabis when traditiona...

"Revolutions are never won by the ruling class... if you want to fix healthcare, you have to be willing to accept a negative sum game. Someone is losing." Why are self-funded employers still paying for healthcare on a "fee-for-service" basis, where every single transaction is billed separately with zero guarantee of a positive outcome? My guests this week are Francois and Jerem...

"I can't fathom a world where employers are expected to budget and create a plan for their future without understanding what the costs of their healthcare are. Everything needs to be grounded in fact and truth." Is the traditional insurance network obsolete? My guest this week is Amy Wykoff , Chief Product Officer at Nomi Health . After starting her career building foundational AI mo...

"There’s no bad risk, there’s just mispriced risk... we helped one carrier achieve a 29.1% improvement in their loss ratio just through better risk selection." How do stop-loss carriers and self-funded employers accurately predict which groups are going to run well and which ones are about to see skyrocketing claims? My guest this week is Ali Panjwani , Founder and CEO of Merit Medicine...

If you'd like your question answered on next month's episode, call/text 469-213-6381 and leave us a voicemail/text. Each month on Last Month In Healthcare, producer Nathaniel joins me to discuss the previous month's podcasts, headlines, and listener-submitted questions. This month, we're joined by Jeff Bak from Imagine360!Together, we react to the latest headlines from March, inclu...

"We are in a $5 trillion US healthcare consumer market with no consumer in it... I basically decided we had been surgically removed from the US healthcare system." My guest this week is Mark Galvin , a serial entrepreneur who successfully funded his own company's healthcare by pairing a $10,000 High Deductible Health Plan with a fully funded HSA and HRA - saving his company 32% and h...

"I've got a patient in Washington state. He's traveling 100 miles every other week to receive an infusion. We moved this patient into the home and saved the plan $700,000 on this one patient...on gout treatment." Why are infusion drugs quietly destroying your health plan's budget? This week, my guest is Rob LaHayne , Co-Founder of Leap Health . We pull back the curtain on one...

If you'd like your question answered on next month's episode, call/text 469-213-6381 and leave us a voicemail/text. Each month on Last Month In Healthcare, producer Nathaniel joins me to discuss the previous month's headlines and listener-submitted questions. This month, we are officially in the new studio! Nathaniel and I react to the latest headlines from February, including the FTC&...

"We don't view ourselves as a TPA, we view ourselves more as a platform... our goal is to simplify and reduce the barriers of entry into the TPA space." The role of the Third-Party Administrator is undergoing a massive evolution. No longer just a back-office claims processor, the modern TPA is being asked to serve as the high-tech, high-touch "nucleus" of the entire health...

“Show me an incentive structure and I'll show you human behavior... until employers realize they have more power than they give themselves credit for, this can't continue." My guest this week is Norm Volsky , Managing Partner at DRI and Founder of MVP Growth Partners. Norm has spent the last decade as one of the top executive recruiters in the digital health and employer benefits spac...

"Why are we paying $10,000 for a $30 drug?" My guest this week is Pramod John, a former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who entered the healthcare space to tackle the largest economic problem in the country: skyrocketing healthcare costs. Pramod quickly realized that healthcare's dysfunction is actually not a technology problem - it is a deeply ingrained problem with economic incent...