How HR Can Finally Play Offense on Healthcare Costs with Ted Bloomberg

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Bee Swift Beacon, the podcast where we shine a light on the experts, the latest trends, the best practices, and maybe even a few surprises. Hi, I'm Denise. - And I'm Joel. - We are here to give you a break from swimming and spreadsheets. - And from wrestling, whatever weird thing might have popped up today. - Each episode, we spotlight the people and the big ideas that make benefits. - And work. - Work better for everyone. - There's no consulting speak, no sales pitches. It's just honest conversations about what's interesting in the world of work and benefits and beyond. - Let's get started. (upbeat music) - Welcome to Bee Swift Beacon. This is our first episode of 2026 and we are going to jump right into the deep end and talk about all of the ever rising costs in benefits and healthcare right now. - Yeah, Joel, that's right. So, benefit healthcare costs are on the rise, probably not surprising, but depending on who you talk to, they're gonna go up nine to 10% this year. And I think employers really need to start thinking about either redesign or be redesigned. (laughs) - Yeah, deductibles are up. The networks are narrower, everything's just kind of scrambled and HR has ever told to do more with less. At the end of the day, you know, I think a lot of employees are starting to feel like, you know, are my benefits really benefiting me in the same way anymore? Now, business group on health says that they think HR can cap this at like seven and a half, eight percent, something like that, creative redesigns of everything. But that is really sort of the same old song and dance we've heard for years now. And you have to wonder with all the cost shifting and stuff, are there ways to kind of get around that with technology or are there ways that all of these advancements we've seen in the last couple of years might benefit HR some. So, done right, can we do it? (laughs) - I mean, I think that's the big question. And that's why we're actually really thrilled to sit down with Ted Bloomberg, who is our CEO at Beaswift. So, I'm gonna give a little background about Ted. He actually spent some time as the COO at Health Equity and the Mutual Fun Store. But more importantly, we think we're so lucky and proud to have Ted with us every day leading Beaswift. So, Ted, I know some fun facts about you. I thought I'd share one that's about sports. I know we talk a little bit about sports quite a bit when we're together. I know you love sports. I think there's a really strong baseball connection in your family. So, I've heard Ted tell this story. I'm probably not gonna do it justice. But, Ted has been to one of only 20 perfect, major league baseball games. - That's right. - And I believe your father has also. - About 30 years before me. - Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, what a fascinating coincidence. I love baseball, but yeah. - 10% of all the perfect games that have ever been thrown. There was a Bloomberg in the audience. - Wow. Wow, amazing. Welcome. Welcome. - Thank you, thank you. I'm delighted to be here. - Yeah, great, great. - All right, well, like I said, we were jumping into the deep ends. So, 20, 26 renewals, they hit pretty hard. What's behind all of that? - Sure. So, let me start by saying as I'm listening to you guys lead the conversation. This is a very difficult time to be a benefits leader. I mean, in the best of times, you have to balance using benefits as an employee, a tractor, and retainer actually helping to keep people healthy while still trying to manage that bottom line. And I think in this uncertain economy, it's getting even harder. And I think that it's be swift job to try and help our clients and our ecosystem partners as much as we can with this daunting task that you laid out in the opening, which is how do we satisfy all three of those constituencies? How do we make sure that the benefits do feel beneficial? How do we make sure that the CFO is happy? And how do we actually keep people healthy? - Yeah, so Ted, tell us more about what employers can do to really think about adapting to those challenges. - Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of things. I think that it comes down to one thing, and then there's a whole bunch of examples and ideas underneath it. But the one thing is personalized communication and education and engagement. The messaging that our clients have to deliver to their members is not one size fits all anymore. It probably hasn't been one size fits all for a while, but it's really not one size fits all. And so ensuring you know what benefits are out there is a big one, right? Some of these point solutions are really good and they're really effective, and the members of our clients serve don't know that they exist, or they don't comply, or they don't know which plan is best for them given their likely needs. And so personalized communication is super critical. It's why we bought EVIVE last year, which was kind of the industry leading personalized communication platform where we can get the right message, the right person at the right time, to help our clients, the folks that administer and lead and strategize about benefits for some of America's largest companies, help get those messages from people and pursue their strategic objectives, whatever they might be. - Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think connecting the dots and personalization helps do that. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit. So I know talking to clients we hear a lot about AI. I think it's another kind of like GLP ones, right? Hot topic in the market. I think we hear different points of view from HR about whether they're using AI or ready to use AI. So think about some of the client conversations you've been having. What can you share around what HR teams can do so that they don't really just have another black box or just another technology that they have to deal with? - Sure, it's actually a really interesting analogy that you draw because GLP ones and AI are so new and our clients are wrestling with them in much the same way, which is, is this real, does it work? How do I make sure that it doesn't knock me off course of my strategic objectives? How do I respond to this huge change in the case of AI? What's possible from a technology perspective? I talk to half a dozen clients a week and every single client conversation that I have, we talk about AI. Sometimes it's from a place of fear, right? Or is AI is going to give my people the wrong answer at the wrong time. AI is going to take my job. AI is going to be, you know, loose and notorially wrong, right? And sometimes it's from a place of excitement, you know, hey, my HR call center gets 25,000 calls a year. I think if I had a real great AI infrastructure, I could reduce that pretty dramatically. I spend, you know, my team spends half their time reconciling files. I could reduce that. Time expenditure really dramatically. So the first thing I do when I'm talking to somebody about AI is I try to get a sense of where they are. What I love about BSwift's approach to AI is it's our job to meet you where you are. You know, our approach to AI is what we call mindful AI. So the easiest way to think about that is that we look at every job that somebody needs to do, whether it's a member who has to add a dependent, whether it's, you know, an HR team member who has to work with BSwift to reconcile a file, whether it's somebody who's trying to enroll and benefits in a foreign language. Whenever their job is to be done, we ask ourselves, how can AI help in what amounts to a non-threatening way? And then we go through and we very carefully implement the latest tools and technology and our platform allows us to do that because it's super flexible. And so we're able to kind of deliver not sort of like hysterical, exciting, you know, oh, AI me, but, you know, this job is now easier because of AI. So, you know, my favorite example is probably that AI has helped Emma, who is our virtual benefits assistant, speak 150 languages. And, you know, we can all imagine trying to do benefits in a foreign language who wouldn't be very good at it. And we have a client who had three or four hundred families this year, you know, do their benefits on BSwift and Haitian Creole. And that would not have been possible before the advent of AI to help us implement a language that's not spoken by too many people who live in America who is incredibly important to this client. And then having AI power Emma chat. There are certain places where we deploy what we call human in the loop, right? We don't call it that. That's an industry term for it. So we have natural language AI power chat, which has been unbelievable. And she answers the vast majority of the questions immediately. And she answers them right, the vast majority of the time. But there are still places where the questions are complex or tricky. And so we have humans kind of evaluate the answers. And I think that commitment to checking and double checking has made our clients really comfortable with how we do it. - So one thing I'm going to pick out there that you mentioned was there is this fear, you know, AI might be coming for people's jobs. So what actually is the impact of BSwift's AI for an HR team? - Sure. So from our perspective, the goal of the tools that we deploy, not just our AI tools, but the goal of why you would outsource benefits administration to BSwift in the first place, is so that you can focus on the more interesting and more challenging strategic questions around benefits that we led the conversation with, right? And not have to spend, you know, 80, 90% of your time checking files are answering questions that are easily answerable and the data exists. But, you know, your members aren't going to go look for that data. So what we've seen is we've deployed AI in the various use cases that I've talked about, which are kind of like, let's look at a job to be done. Let's execute it in a way that makes it easier is our teams have had more time. And I think if you go out in the industry and you talk to benefits teams, no one is saying, my team is so big, I don't have enough work for them, right? They typically say I got three people, I got 15 people's worth of work, what am I supposed to do? And if we can turn that 15 people's worth of work into five people's worth of work, you might have a chance to actually get done all the things that you're trying to get done. - So AI has also raised everyone's expectations, right? There's a lot of things that people think now are going to be much more personalized to them. With these changes and expectations over experiences, how do you see personalization really fitting into the future of benefits? - I think personalization is the future of benefits. You think about your experience, you know, your consumer grade experiences, right? Like if I mention gardening tool in passing, Mark Zuckerberg knows I want it and start serving it to me on Instagram, and that's personalization. And that's the expectation. And so we know a lot about our clients. We know whether they need to use a point solution. We know whether they are using that point solution. We know a lot of cases, not every case, what their claims were last year, which might help inform their plan choice for this year. We know they have dependents who are certain ages, so they might be interested in childcare information or family planning information. And so it's the expectation of our 17 million members that we serve that we deliver a message that is aware of who they are. You know, and that is another place where some clients say, hey, we're not ready to use the full ocean of data that you have. We'd like you to put some guardrails on it. And so we do. We have some clients for whom we personalized messages based on claims, and we have other clients for whom we personalized messages solely based on demographic data, right? So you can imagine the difference would be, hey, Ted, you're about 50. A lot of guys your age often get a colonoscopy now. You should consider it. That would be just based on demographics. All they know about me is my birthday. Then there's another message, which is, hey, Ted, it's been three years since you got your last colonoscopy. Here's a link to Dr. Brush, who did the last one, if you want to go ahead and make another one. That uses claims. We could have a debate. Reasonable people could disagree about which one of those messages is more powerful, is one of those messages overly intrusive. Our job is to build the platform flexibly enough so that we meet the clients where they are. - So, Ted, I'm gonna stand personalization for a minute. - Yeah, so personalization as a cost savings method. You talk a little bit about that. - Sure, I think there's a lot of different answers to this question, and to a certain extent, it depends on who you are. And that's been one of my biggest findings as I talk to clients and as we actually deploy this. There are examples where you can just walk right into the CFO's office and say, here it is. Client thinks, plan A versus plan B is cheaper for the client to administer. We can use personalized messaging to move people from A to B that for whom it's appropriate. Easy example. Another example, one of my favorites is, we partnered with a company called Meritive who has hundreds of millions of not billions of claims. And we determined for a 10,000 life group that if you educate people around when to use urgent cares and when to use ERs, a 10,000 life client can save a couple million bucks. Well, that's an example, right? If you're a heavy user of ERs, we can help educate you about where the urgent cares are near you, right? That's an example of cost savings. However, not all clients are where it's same. So, for example, Meritive would tell you, and we've validated this data in a lot of different ways, that someone getting a flu shot's worth about two bucks and claims, it's just not that powerful. Because most healthy people don't get the flu and go to hospital. However, for a retailer, somebody getting a flu shot is worth a ton. Because a retail store that typically operates with 30 team members, if half those team members are down with the flu, that store will sell less stuff if they've only got 15 team members. And so for some retailers, in particular, flu shots are incredibly important, potentially worth more than any cost savings on claims you could find. And so we've got a lot of campaigns that can save you money, but it also depends on what the clients actually trying to achieve. Last example, clients that have really high turnover, and I'm just getting sort of candidate capitalist here for a minute, actually don't economically care whether you are healthy. Because if a client is turnover that's 80% or 60%, you're probably not going to be there the next year anyway, so like going to the doctor maybe doesn't help you. - Doesn't matter. - Right. For clients like us who have incredibly low single-digit turnover, population health really does matter. So going to get a primary care doctor visit could be worth a ton. Primary care visit is a primary care visit, but for some clients, they have concluded that it is worth more in certain cases than for other clients. And so it's our job to meet clients where they are. I'll give you just one last example, which isn't necessarily a cost save, but it's interesting. We have a client who is supremely frustrated about the fact that her team members forfeit their FSA dollars. It's a practical matter, that's a cost savings. But from her perspective, philosophically, the way the company runs their culture, that's a bad guy. And so we work together to basically tell people, hey, you've got 362 bucks left in this FSA. What are you doing about it? Here's some things you can do. Here's a link to a store that where everything in there is FSA eligible, like, come on, buddy, spend the money. And we reduce their forfeit to dollars by 30%. Now, there's some CFOs listening to this, who might roll their eyes and be like, what are you doing, right? But from their cultural perspective, that was incredibly important. So it's our job to ensure that we meet people where they are, whether that's cost savings or compliance with point solutions or getting a flu shot or going to see your primary care doc or whatever it is, it's important to our client. Well, it sounds like communication is more than just a new way to personalize things and get information to people. It really is a way of achieving more of a holistic well-being. It's that, Sam, right? Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. And I think one of the ones that I'm most excited about is compliance with care. Are you taking your meds? If you have diabetes, are you compliant with the treatment of diabetes? Because we know that treating chronic conditions aggressively or effectively or consistently leads to better health outcomes. One of the great things about the EVIVE platform is, well, yes, we have your claims and yes, we have your demographic data. One of the things we've built is a closed loop conversation with those point solutions, not every single point solution out there, but many of them. And so I know if you're doing what Lavango tells you you should. And so I can nudge you if you're not. And I think that leads to better health outcomes, which is fantastic, right? Another one that we love is a surgical point solution called Lantern. It's not only surgical they do oncology as well, but I'll use a surgical example where they know the highest quality doctors with the best surgical outcomes. And they go in, they basically say, imagine, hey, if my client's willing to only do surgeries here or to, you know, incense surgeries here, will you give me a discount? Will you give me the best docs, et cetera? And then we can educate people in the enrollment process about what an amazing opportunity that is that their employer has negotiated on their behalf. And, you know, we drove, you know, double digit percentage increase in the utilization of that point solution, which has a double digit increase in positive surgical outcomes. So as the market evolves, I can't tell you what the most effective point solution in America is going to be five years from now. But what I can tell you is that we can get you into it and tell you all about it and educate it and tell you why you need it, why you need it. I'm going to stay on nudges for a second. So we're talking about being nudged, kind of like Amazon, but in the first place. What about, how does that change annual enrollment? Because I know we talk about annual enrollment as the Super Bowl. I think all of our employers are super focused on getting annual enrollment, right? But now with personalization, being able to nudge, being able to connect the dots throughout the year, how does that change? So, you know, that's a great question we think about it a lot, right? Because, you know, we have built a decision support tool that we think is the best in the industry. And it's really great when you go through the enrollment process at, you know, identifying not only what has happened to you in the past, but what you think is likely to happen to you in the future, educating you on your various plan choices, helping you connect the dots. Not only about what plan we'd recommend, but why? And it's great, right? But as you point out, it's a once a year thing. So, what we can use the EVIVE platform to do is talk to you about those topics throughout the year, right? So, let's say, for example, your employer rolls out a surest or a coupe or, you know, an alternative health plan that they think is better for a significant part of their population. We do great. We can actually really influence the uptake of something like surester coupe, just his examples, in the actual enrollment process. But we can do better if we're talking to you about those things throughout the year. And we're helping you reach your own, giving you, arming the member with the information they need to reach their own conclusions about what plan might be better, what you'd look for in a plan, and also just introducing the concept. So, you know, the first time you've ever heard of surest isn't when you and your spouse sit down to enroll at 8 p.m. the date, you know, when it's due at midnight. Ted, so I know we talked about a lot. Give us, like, your top things for HR leaders. What can they take away from this? Sure. Number one, we empathize with you. I think the role of HR leaders has never been harder. I think that teams are shrinking. We're asking new benefits leaders to step into the role of experienced benefits leaders sometimes, which is difficult. You're getting pinched by not only cost pressures, but also health pressures and also, you know, using benefits to attract and retain talent, pressures. I think sometimes companies fortunes change over night. Like, I've had clients where big tech companies and, you know, I'll say, "Hey, what are you thinking about?" And they're like, "We just want the best benefits ever. Money is no object." And then they miss earnings and all of a sudden, it's like, I gotta save $10 million. And so I think number one, we empathize. We know the job is hard. And number two is the personalization is the key. You cannot deliver a far less than consumer grade experience anymore in any arena, but certainly not something as, you know, emotional and meaningful as benefits. The fact is that, you know, we all you throw around that term, consumer grade experience, it's gotten pretty good out there. I mean, you know, the way that messaging gets targeted, the way that think about, you know, before you're sitting in your bed, doom scrolling, what do they call it when you're in bed, zombie scrolling, and whatever it is, right? And you're kind of like, I don't know how you keep doing it Instagram or YouTube, but this is what I want to see, right? Well, that's the expectation now. That is absolutely the expectation now is that the messaging is right for you. So if I send 25 year old woman a colonoscopy email, not only does it not work, it has negative value because it causes her not to trust anything else that she's seeing from us. So I think personalization is the key. I think the third thing I would say is don't give up hope. There are ways to wrestle these beasts to the ground, right? The cost, beast, the outcome, beast, right? And whether it's driving people to the plans that you all have concluded because your benefits experts are best for your people or ensuring compliance with point solutions and with, you know, care pathways that actually help manage chronic conditions or whether it's getting people to take more responsibility for their financial future by contributing more to an HSA or 401K or spending their FSA dollars or whatever it is, whether it's making sure your frontline retail associates are in their chairs because you get them flu shots and you get them preventative care, we can do it. We can do it together. So I think the biggest ask that I would have is get crisp on what you're trying to get done and don't keep it a secret. I keep them back to I have one client who has 3% turnover and I have another client who has 110% turnover. Their answers to what's important by definition have to be different. And if we don't have that high quality conversation, we can't execute for you and help you deliver the goals that you seek and then, you know, last is that we're so confident in our ability to do it that we'll put our money whereabouts. So if there's metrics that you want to move, let's get in a ring and move them together. - This has been a really great conversation. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to leave HR leaders with? - You know, just that Beeswift is there for you and if you have strategic questions you want to ask or if you have questions about how AI works or if you have questions about, you know, various point solutions or various case studies on how we've moved needles using our, you know, messaging platform, just call us and we'd love to talk you through it. - Great. Well, thank you so much Ted for being with us today and thank you to the listeners for also joining us today. If you want to know more, you can go to Beeswift.com or you can find us on LinkedIn. - Okay, great and then stay tuned for our next episode where we're talking about compliance. I know what you're thinking. We're gonna make it exciting. - We swear, I'm not out that one. I'm not out that one. No one needs my opinion on that. (upbeat music) And that's our show for today. Thanks for listening to the Beeswift Beacon. For more insights, tips and resources, visit us at Beeswift.com. - If you haven't yet, make sure that you subscribe to get us in your podcast feed. Just search Beeswift Beacon. - And we love your feedback too. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. - And hey, if you like what you heard, share it specifically with that colleague who uses one of those big paper desk calendars. - My guess is that they probably need us most. Until next time. (upbeat music)