How 60 of the nation’s biggest employers are uniting to fight the benefits status quo
When Josh Riff was leading benefits for Target, he found himself increasingly frustrated that he wasn’t able to take more of a lead when it came to managing the healthcare of his employees.
“All the ideas, all the innovation, everything came through [our carrier],” he says. “We were on the hook to pay for our healthcare, but we weren’t doing anything proactive to change the trend or the curve except for what our provider was telling us to do.”
What Riff soon learned after talking to other benefits managers was that he was far from alone. Around the country, benefits departments were quietly seething over a number of issues wreaking havoc on their companies and their employees: Rising costs. Chronic conditions. Growing amounts of waste. Lack of transparency. Most were disenchanted with carriers and other industry players who were failing to find innovative solutions to fix the problems.
Unsatisfied with the status quo, Riff, a trained ER physician, began to look into the new crop of health-tech startups aimed at providing cutting-edge benefit solutions for employees. Riff began meeting with them, but it was hard to keep up. There were too many companies, and he couldn’t take all the meetings while he was running benefits for one of the country’s largest employers.