Budgie Health

Loved gathering an incredible group of Healthcare AI technical researchers, builders and founders with the Pear VC and Define Ventures! Thank you to our Lighting Talk speakers! ⚡ Professor James Zou, Healthcare AI Professor at Stanford University ⚡ Cyril Zakka, MD, ML Research Health Lead at Hugging Face ⚡ George Spurling, CEO & Founder of Budgie Health ⚡ Randy Womack, CEO & Co-Founder of Solara Health Shoutout to my co-host Chuka Esiobu and my partner Eddie Eltoukhy, Tracy Do and Maile Paulmeier!

❓ Are you an employer that offers a health plan option that no employee should choose? 🗽 Most employers in the US offer their employees a choice of two or more health plans. The concept seems great. Americans love choice. Don’t force someone to pay for a rich PPO plan when they want a narrow network and an HSA..and vice versa! 🤼♂️ However, one of the more interesting phenomena we see at Budgie Health is what are called ‘dominated’ health plan options. These are plans that are objectively worse financially for employees. That’s probably not the kind of ‘choice’ you’re looking to offer. 📊 See the chart at the bottom. This is a de-identified analysis of an employer that offered two health plan options. We ran their employee claims history and plan designs through our analytics engine to identify how much each employee would have spent in total on healthcare last year on each plan (factoring in premiums, out-of-pocket costs, network utilization, and any employer HSA/FSA contributions). What we found was striking. If you were an employee getting coverage just for yourself, you would ALWAYS be financially better off on Medical Plan A, regardless of how much care you utilized. It wasn’t even close. Now, what percent of employees do you think were on the ‘dominated’ plan? (I.e. the one that could never be in their interest) Drum-roll……50%❗ We estimate US employees lose about $60 billion per year on these choices….and it’s heavily indexed towards older workers, low earners, and women. Those feel like groups we should care about. Do you offer a dominated health plan option to your employees? Are your employees getting the most benefit from your plans? If you’re not sure, reach out and we can help you find out. #benefitoptimization #employeebenefits #healthcareinteroperability

Exciting News to Share! 🤝 Professional Group Plans (PGP), Archon and Budgie Health Announce Strategic Partnership that will be available to over 600,00 employees - helping them save money and make better healthcare decisions. 🚀 We're thrilled to announce that PGP, a leading general agency in the tri-state area, has joined forces with Budgie Health! This partnership is poised to revolutionize the way employees interact with their claims data and make health care decisions. By integrating Budgie's groundbreaking technology, over 600,000 employees in the PGP and Archon network can now access real-time analysis of individual claims data and receive personalized recommendations. That means potential average savings of $1,200 per family annually, while enhancing coverage through smarter utilization choices. 💰💡 Picture this: you tap a notification and discover how switching to a mail order for your medication can save you money. In one click, you’re set up and ready to save. With Budgie Health, these insights come to you in real-time, making healthcare choices as friendly as asking your neighbor for advice. 🏥✨ This isn't just about streamlining costs; it's about giving people the understanding and tools they need to make confident healthcare choices. And we're proud to pioneer this change with PGP and Archon, combining their stellar network with our advanced analytics and ai-driven features to revolutionize the healthcare space. 🧠💻 Healthcare made simple, transparent, and efficient - that's the future we're dedicated to building. For more information on this exciting collaboration, check out the press release here: https://lnkd.in/ev4J8Yfq #PGP #Archon #BudgieHealth #Partnership #insurance #HealthcareInnovation #EmpoweringEmployees #SmartSavings #ai #insurancebrokers #insurancenews

📣 🥇 Hot off the press: Budgie Health is the People's Choice Award Winner at The Conference Board 2024 Employee Health Care Conference in NYC! Our CEO, George Spurling, was one of 4 finalist pitches at the Day 2 Opening Session, where hundreds of employer benefit leaders voted on their preferred solution. Come learn more and book a demo at www.budgie-health.com!

🔊 The most important part of any company is the people. They drive the culture, uphold our values, and solve our hardest problems. Whenever we have a problem...Chase is on the case! 🔦 We’re proud to spotlight Chase Zimmerman this week!

🔊 The most important part of any company is the people. They drive the culture, uphold our values, and solve our hardest problems. Whenever we have a problem...Chase is on the case! 🔦 We’re proud to spotlight Chase Zimmerman this week!

📣 Going to The Conference Board Annual Employee Health Care Conference in San Diego next week? Make sure to come find us! George Spurling will be speaking at the Vendor Showcase event on Monday from 5-7:30pm.

If a stranger came up to you in your favorite cafe and said "I know a coffee shop an hour away, and it might be cheaper than this place", what's the chance you would head over there? Or would you just avoid that person in the future. That's what it can feel like when incumbents help you 'navigate' healthcare. Let's stop assuming that people aren't willing to accept good advice and change their behavior and maybe consider a better way to approach them.

A couple of weeks ago I had just finished putting my kids to bed and was walking out of my son’s room when out of the blue I had a crippling pain in my neck that completely immobilized me. I was having a severe muscle spasm…something I had never experienced before. I was able to shuffle to my room, lie down on my bed, and spent the night awake in agony, unable to even take off my shoes….wishing my wife hadn’t been traveling for work that week. Fortunately, I had time lying there to think about how to best navigate the system and put my healthcare benefits to work while minimizing my cost. I scheduled a virtual consult with One Medical for the next morning, had some muscle relaxants delivered by Capsule the same day, and knew that through my spouse I had free access to Sword Health, where I am now working with a PT to limit the likelihood of this happening again. The total cost to me was less than $100 ($130.31 of pre-tax money through my HSA; $122.57 for the OneMedical consult, $7.74 for the meds, and $0 for Sword). Now play that back for someone that doesn’t work right in the middle of this space: - Would they already be set up for a virtual consult with One Medical or would they have gone to an ER or urgent care? - Would they know to get the prescription sent to Capsule for immediate delivery when they were immobile or would they be schlepping to a CVS? - Would they know what Sword Health was and that they had it available as a free benefit through their spouse’s employer or would they be paying $150 a pop for a PT they found online? - Would they have their HSA account funded and available in ApplePay to pay for the costs or would they have put it on whatever credit card was handy? This could have been the start of a really inconvenient and expensive care experience… Employers have been going to great lengths to set up rich benefits for their employees for just these types of situations, but most employees only care in those moments where it really matters, and that’s when you need to catch them. You’re not going to do that with a 200-page benefits handbook, or by having every one of your vendors send every one of your employees a postcard about their offering every January. You need to be able to let them know about the right benefit at the right time, based on what they’re currently going through. If this sounds interesting to you, let’s talk, because that’s what we’re up to at Budgie. #employeebenefits #healthcarewaste #interoperability #employeeexperience