EP339: Helping Employers Navigate the Perilous Medical-Industrial Complex, With David Contorno

In Episode 339, Stacey Richter talks with David Contorno, founder of E Powered Benefits, about helping employers navigate what he calls the perilous medical-industrial complex. David walks through the road map self-insured employers can follow to lower total healthcare spend by 20% to 40% in the first year — valuing independent primary care, getting cost and quality data before a bill arrives (not after), designing benefits that steer employees to high-quality providers, and knowing exactly how their broker gets paid. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ✅ Why insurance carriers and many brokers have every incentive for premiums to go up every year ✅ Why devaluing primary care pushes patients straight to specialists — and what that costs ✅ Why getting cost and quality data prospectively protects employers and employees from "gotcha" bills ✅ Why every employer should have their broker sign a compensation disclosure form ✅ How self-insured employers following this road map have cut total healthcare spend by 20% to 40% in a single year WHY THIS MATTERS Going self-funded is where the journey starts, not where it ends. If most employers truly understood how badly carriers and health systems are taking advantage of them, it would look a lot like Stockholm syndrome — and what's required to correct it isn't a massive degree of intellect or innovation, it's simply doing the road map. === LINKS === 🔗 Show Notes with all mentioned links: Episode Page 🔗 Healthcare Industry Acronyms and Terms ✉️ Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter 🫙 Support the podcast with a small donation to the Tip Jar 📺 Subscribe to our YouTube channel 🎤 Listen on Apple Podcasts 🎤 Listen on Spotify === CONNECT WITH THE RHV TEAM === ✭ LinkedIn ✭ Threads ✭ Bluesky ✭ X 00:00 Introduction. 04:20 How do you ensure better care for patients? 05:10 "What's required to correct those things is not really a massive degree of intellect or even innovation." 05:38 What's the road map for self-insured employers who want to take control of their healthcare costs? 10:06 "Higher costs equal more profit and more revenue." 14:03 "The problem with devalued primary care is … that most people pass over the primary care provider and go right to the specialist." 19:41 "Every employer should have every broker sign a compensation disclosure form." 20:06 "If you think there's perverse incentives on the medical side … it gets even worse on the pharmacy side." 21:01 What changes do employers find when they follow the road map to taking control of their healthcare costs? 21:44 "It's not uncommon for us to reduce total healthcare spend for an employer by between 20% and 40% at the end of the first year." 22:09 "I can't change [the] outcome without changing the path you walked to get there." 22:41 "Going self-funded is where the journey starts, not where it ends." 24:47 "If most employers truly understood how badly these carriers and health systems are taking advantage of them … [it's almost like] Stockholm syndrome." 27:09 "The only legitimate fear that employers should have is, How do they message these changes … to the employees?" 29:21 "This has to happen, and if it doesn't happen, the system's going to break and … be picked up by entities that are, I think, only going to make the situation worse."