Blog
Three key characteristics of a successful Employer Champion
By Shaylin McNally, Director of Customer Success So, your company has just rolled out this great new benefit (MyMedicalShopper!), and you’ve been assigned the role of Employer Champion. You might be thinking, why me? And that’s a great question. The simple answer: probably because we told them to. Not explicitly, of course. But this is…
Read MoreHealthcare deductibles are not like golf—lower actually is NOT better!
By Mark Galvin, Co-Founder/CEO, MMS Analytics, Inc. If I agreed to give you $20,000 if you would agree to roll a pair of dice and give me back the number that came up x $1,150 (somewhere between $2,300 and $13,800), would you want to participate (and be guaranteed to make between $6,200 and $17,700)? If…
Read MorePay Attention! How to Get People to Care About Healthcare at Work
By Matthew McCormick, Partnership Executive, MMS Analytics, Inc. According to MetLife’s most recent Employee Benefit Trends Study, “the most important benefits to employees have two things in common: 1) they play a central role in helping them achieve their personal and work-related goals, and 2) they address their main stressors, particularly around personal finances, retirement,…
Read MoreWhy the healthcare industry won’t let me shorten my presentations
By Christopher Matrumalo, VP of Marketing, MMS Analytics, Inc. I give a lot of presentations—easily hundreds and perhaps even thousands each year for the past several years now. I field a LOT of questions from my audiences. Still today, I find myself amazed at how effective the healthcare industry has remained in perpetuating misconceptions and…
Read MoreBut What About the Carrier’s Tools?
Do you know how often I hear the above question from brokers who are looking to provide a price transparency tool to their employer groups? So much so that, like a typical millennial, (Don’t worry I won’t say it, but it starts with OK and rhymes with doomer) I decided to make a meme out…
Read MoreSeven Cost-Saving Solutions That Reduce Healthcare Costs
According to the 2019 October Department of Labor inflation report, healthcare costs rose 4.3 percent year-over-year, surging to the highest levels in three years. The increasing cost of hospital services and rising drug costs are to blame for this surge, making healthcare costs the fastest growing sector in the economy. If a 4.3 percent increase…
Read MoreTotally Wasted: A Story About Market Failure in Healthcare
Have you ever sat down to go through your personal budget and, as you’re scanning through your purchases, thought to yourself, I could have gotten that for less? You add up all those “could-haves”, and you’re left with a sum at the end of the month that you wish could have gone towards new shoes,…
Read MorePrice Transparency Alone Will Not Reduce the Cost of Healthcare Without Consumer Interest in Shopping
The economist, Milton Friedman in “How to Cure Health Care” writes that one of the factors “explaining both the high level of spending on medical care and the dissatisfaction with that spending” is “nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own.” His observation is a crucial factor for…
Read MoreMr./Ms. Benefits Broker, Don’t forget how important You are. (Let me remind you)
Hey Mr./Ms. Benefits Broker, I know you don’t have much time, given it is the big, bad Q4, after all. I’ve heard the many variations of “Sorry, I am crushed in the 4th quarter” and the “I’m in the thick of renewal meetings, please be patient.” As this isn’t my first Q4 working in the…
Read MoreHow a price transparency tool can help maximize the value of an HSA!
Health savings accounts (HSAs) provide employees enrolled in high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), a tax-advantaged way to save and pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses. Combining a price transparency solution with an HSA account allows employees to decrease their healthcare costs by 30 to 40 percent today and maximize the value of an HSA for future medical…
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