Dec 31, 2025

This is Part 2 of Stacey's year-end synthesis of the most actionable themes from 2025. Last week covered Themes 1–3. This week covers 4 and 5 — which are, if you squint, really two sides of the same problem: plan sponsors can't buy value when they can't see what they're buying, and they can't see what they're buying...

Dec 24, 2025

As Stacey Richter reflects on a year of Relentless Health Value episodes, three themes kept surfacing in nearly every conversation: the foundational role of trusted relationships, the cost of underinvesting in primary care, and the dominance of perverse financial incentives and profiteering. This is Part 1 of a...

Dec 18, 2025

From $9 Million in the Hole to $112 Million in the Black: How Marilyn Bartlett Turned Around Montana's State Employee Health Plan. What happens when a self-funded health plan is headed for bankruptcy and a CPA with a spreadsheet and her eye on the target gets to work? In roughly three years, Marilyn Bartlett, CPA, CMA,...

Dec 11, 2025

The value equation in healthcare is outcomes divided by cost — but here's the revelation Stacey Richter had in this conversation: we've been measuring it exactly backwards. In American healthcare, costs are tracked at the macro aggregate level while outcomes are measured at the narrow individual service level. Flip...

Dec 4, 2025

If a drug keeps a patient out of the hospital — and hospital spend is 50% of most plan sponsors' total costs — why do we design benefits that make patients less able to afford that drug? That's the martini-fueled question Stacey Richter started with, and it threads through this entire conversation about why...