Upward Growth

Upward Growth Podcast

Business EN ↓ 4 episodes

Upward Growth is the podcast for anyone making strategic bets on the health plan market. Host Ryan Peterson is the principal of Upward Growth, a health plan market advisory firm. With 15 years selling into health plans, Ryan brings an operator's view of the buying side. Each episode breaks down how plans buy, operate, and make decisions, then translates that into commercial implications for health tech vendors, investors, provider organizations, and management consultancies. What you'll hear: breakdowns of what's moving in the health plan market, CMS regulatory shifts translated into go-to-mar...

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Upward Growth

Episodes

MedPAC's June Report: How Health Plans Are Buying Differently in 2026 28.06.2026 16:00

MedPAC's June 2026 report to Congress dropped on June 15 and attached $22 billion in higher-than-justified Medicare Advantage payments in 2026 to coding intensity alone. The same report documented $23.7 billion in improper MA payments for fiscal year 2025 and endorsed a federal role for technology in fixing Medicare enrollment, in the same chapter that flagged the broker channel as part of th...

Member Memory: The New Vendor Lens on Medicare Advantage Star Ratings 20.06.2026 17:26

On April 2, CMS published the CY 2027 Final Rule and tripled the weight of two Health Outcomes Survey measures inside the Medicare Advantage Star Ratings. By 2029, HOS and CAHPS will drive close to 40 percent of the total Star Ratings calculation. The shift pulls every health tech vendor that touches a Medicare Advantage member into the Star Ratings conversation, whether or not they have ever posi...

Why Clover v. HHS Matters Even If You're Not in Stars 13.06.2026 18:19

On May 27, a federal judge in Georgia threw out 20 Medicare Advantage Star Ratings measures from Clover Health's 2026 rating and ordered CMS to recalculate. The order is narrow. The reasoning is not. In this first episode of the Upward Growth Podcast, Ryan Peterson breaks down why Clover v. HHS is structurally different from every prior Star Ratings lawsuit, why your buyer at the plan got ha...

Welcome to the Upward Growth Podcast 25.05.2026 0:58

The Upward Growth Podcast is the new audio channel from Upward Growth, a health plan market advisory firm. Host Ryan Peterson breaks down what's actually moving in the health plan market and what it means for the people selling into it, investing in it, or building for it. Think of it as the audio version of the weekly Upward Growth newsletter, plus occasional conversations with the operators...