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...

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,...

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....

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...