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Renewal season myth: you can't do anything about rising healthcare costs, it's just the market.It's an easy thing to bel...
10/16/2026

Renewal season myth: you can't do anything about rising healthcare costs, it's just the market.

It's an easy thing to believe when every renewal comes back higher than the last. But cost trend isn't purely something that happens to you. Plan design, network structure, and how proactively a plan is managed all directly affect the number on your renewal, sometimes more than the broader market does.

Treating rising costs as unavoidable means giving up the levers that are actually within your control.

This is the eighth in our Renewal Season Myths series, where we take the things brokers say every renewal season and run them through a fiduciary lens.

Want to see the levers you actually have? Schedule your Strategic Analysis.

10/15/2026

Here's Chris' rule of thumb: there is no free lunch. A wellness program might deliver real return. It might also do nothing and cost you money. If a vendor guarantees positive ROI with no downside, that is your cue to start asking questions, not to sign.

Then the harder truth. A step challenge might lift morale. It might help long-term health. What it will not do is bend your trend, because your trend is not being driven by step counts.

It is being driven by the two employees on specialty drugs accounting for 40% of the cost for the entire group.

So the question Chris would ask is not how do we get people walking more. It is how do we buy those drugs better.

CFOs and benefits leaders: look at your last RFP. How much space did wellness get compared to pharmacy strategy? If the ratio is backwards, so is the spend.

Behind the Bill: most employers already have audit rights written into their carrier, TPA, or PBM contract. Most have al...
10/13/2026

Behind the Bill: most employers already have audit rights written into their carrier, TPA, or PBM contract. Most have also never used them.

Audit clauses get buried in vendor contracts, restricted in scope, or made so procedurally painful that nobody follows through. The result is a right that exists on paper and nowhere else.

Check out our blog to see what a typical audit clause actually says, the restrictions vendors quietly build in, and the steps to request and run an independent audit today, without waiting on Congress.

10/13/2026

Who is going to issue a loan you never have to pay back? This is how Chris unraveled the first tax scheme that ever landed on his desk.

The program was called the Classic 105, run out of Louisiana by Total Financial Group. The pitch explained that the $1,000 employees received each month came from a loan they would never have to repay. A broker brought it to him because a significant New Jersey city was about to adopt it.

His advice was short: you're going to end up in jail if you do this.

She listened. The promoters did not. They went to federal prison, and the DOJ press releases are still findable.

Here is the part employers miss. When these unwind, the DOJ is clear that employers and individual taxpayers bear responsibility for the unpaid taxes. The promoter is gone. The bill is yours and your employees'.

If a program only works because of a mechanism that makes no financial sense on its own, ask who is funding it. The answer is usually nobody, which means eventually it is you.

Link is in the comment

ERISA 408 is two questions long, disclosed, and reasonable. The first one most employers can answer... but the second on...
10/12/2026

ERISA 408 is two questions long, disclosed, and reasonable. The first one most employers can answer... but the second one they tend to treat as a matter of opinion.

It isn't a matter of opinion though. Reasonable has a benchmark, and the benchmark is what the same services cost on the open market.

Telemedicine, a claims debit card, basic navigation. These all have prices you can look up. Chris did exactly that and came back with $8 per employee per month for the bundle these programs are built around.

So when a vendor is collecting $200 per employee per month, the gap is not a rounding error. It is the whole product. And when you ask what the extra is buying, the honest answer is a tax position, not a service.

You would never approve a software contract at twenty-five times market without asking why. Your health plan is a bigger line item than your software.

What is the largest per-employee-per-month fee your plan pays right now, and do you know what it buys?

10/09/2026

"We take $1,200 pretax, we take a $200 fee from the employee, we take a $50 fee from you. We give your employee back $1,000 a month tax-free."

If that pitch has hit your inbox, you are not alone. ERISA attorney Chris Vanderwolk says every midsize CFO gets these emails, and his answer is blunt: it's bogus.

Here is what makes it fail, and it is one word. Reimbursement.

Pre-tax contributions are real. Tax-free reimbursement of medical expenses is real. That is how medical plans, HRAs, and FSAs work. But every one of those programs requires that you either pay a provider directly for care, or reimburse an actual out-of-pocket expense.

In a F**A double-dip, nobody spent anything. There is no out-of-pocket expense to reimburse. The money just cycles.

And the compliance memo they hand you will walk through all the real rules without ever addressing that gap.

If a vendor is promising savings based on employee participation rather than actual spending, that is your signal to stop reading.

Every plan sponsor has a version of this conversation to some extent. Something gets recommended, the recommendation get...
10/08/2026

Every plan sponsor has a version of this conversation to some extent. Something gets recommended, the recommendation gets accepted, and everyone assumes the expert who made it now carries the risk.

It's not how it works, because the plan sponsor picked the expert. That choice is itself a fiduciary act, and so is every choice they make on your behalf.

What this looks like in practice is unglamorous. You need to be able to show what you looked at, who you asked, what they said, and why you decided the way you did. Not a memo from the vendor. Your own record.

Most benefits committees have none of this for the vendors they added in the last three years.

The fix is not complicated, it is just a habit. Before the next program goes live, write down three things: what problem it solves, how the vendor gets paid, and what you compared it to.

Who keeps that record at your company right now?

You signed the contract for a new vendor. Now what?Kristina Ewing, Director of Health & Wellbeing at Andersen Constructi...
10/07/2026

You signed the contract for a new vendor. Now what?

Kristina Ewing, Director of Health & Wellbeing at Andersen Construction, joins Chelsea Ryckis to share what it really took to roll out direct primary care across a multi-state workforce in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

They'll cover how to get leadership buy-in, the admin load nobody warns you about, how to keep new and existing vendors working together, and what got employees to actually use the new benefit. Kristina will also share her highs and lows, and what she'd do differently next time.

If you're weighing a benefits change and want a realistic picture of what implementation will ask of your team, you'll want to be there.

Tuesday, October 27 | 1:00 to 2:00 PM ET

Peloton bikes and gym memberships aren't a wellness strategy. They're a guess, and often an expensive one.Most perks get...
10/07/2026

Peloton bikes and gym memberships aren't a wellness strategy. They're a guess, and often an expensive one.

Most perks get picked because a CEO liked them personally, not because the workforce data said they were needed. That's the quiet failure point in a lot of wellness budgets.

What works instead: measure first, spend second. A validated stress assessment can score a whole workforce before a single dollar goes toward a new benefit.

Why it matters: presenteeism, not sick days, drives 89% of burnout's cost to employers. One burned-out employee costs an employer roughly $4,000 a year in lost output, without ever missing a day of work.

The lesson: you can't fix what you haven't measured. Data-driven wellness beats preference-driven wellness every time.

Renewal season myth: our PBM passes along the full rebate.Spread pricing and rebate retention are far more common than m...
10/07/2026

Renewal season myth: our PBM passes along the full rebate.

Spread pricing and rebate retention are far more common than most employers realize, and they're built to be easy to miss unless you're asking pointed questions. A summary that says rebates were passed through isn't the same as seeing the actual numbers. Real transparency means your PBM can show you the data, not just tell you it exists.

If your PBM relationship has never been audited, there's a good chance dollars are quietly staying on the table that should be coming back to your plan.

This is the fifth in our Renewal Season Myths series, where we take the things brokers say every renewal season and run them through a fiduciary lens.

Ready to see what's actually happening with your PBM contract? Schedule your Strategic Analysis.

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