Apta Healthcare Blog

Smiles per hour. That’s the cost of riding bikes. If you’ve ridden a bike, you’ve probably had the experience of traveling farther on two wheels compared to how far you would go on two feet. When you pedal forward you are multiplying the distance your feet can travel. For example, taking a step only gets you as far as your foot can reach, but a bicycle can coast along a flat surface with relatively little resistance to motion. Pretty cool and highly efficient. 

Chocolate soufflé. Even the most experienced chefs have a hard time making the perfect soufflé. It’s a dish famously known for its level of technicality as well as food expertise, so jumping in the kitchen to whip this up is no cakewalk. If you thought you were reading an insurance blog but turned into a foodie’s daydream of dark chocolate, bear with me, I promise there’s a point. Health insurance is a lot like baking a cake. The right recipe and ingredients make all the difference. So, if traditional insurance was a plain chocolate cake, self-funded plans are a chocolate soufflé. A little more technical but a lot more rewarding.

It's common for a client to ask their health insurance broker, “How can we get our employees more engaged?”. Savvy employers intrinsically know that engagement is a key component to how their employees utilize their benefits. They add incredible health program enhancements (point solutions) to their plan, get excited about the offering, talk about it during Open Enrollment meetings, and even send out marketing materials to remind their employees to utilize the available solutions. Then they wonder, “Why is nobody engaging?!”

Englewood, Colo., April 21, 2020

Have you ever given much thought to how loud the sun might be? Or, how loud it actually is? I love reading about our cosmos. Black holes, exoplanets, gravitational waves, particle colliders… it all makes my mind race and expand (kind of like the universe [even if we can’t agree on how fast it’s happening!]). But most of all, I like to think about our small place in it all, tucked away on this blue marble in the midst of nothing and everything, all at once.

The uncertainty surrounding the future of healthcare in the United States has put many Americans on edge. The proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the Republican-sponsored American Health Care Act (or Better Care Reconciliation Act) is making people feel unsure, and possibly leaving many Americans uninsured.

In a recent feature series, The Atlantic magazine highlighted “Platinum Patients,” as the most expensive 5 percent of healthcare consumers. The healthcare bills of the Americans featured in this article equal those of the other 95 percent of consumers combined. Who are these people and why do they account for such a hefty portion of healthcare spend?

If you were renting a house, would you invest $30,000 in a kitchen renovation? Of course not. The investment would only benefit the owner who still has complete control over the future of the home. In the world of insurance, the fully insured model is just pouring money into a rental.

Last year, consumer healthcare solutions leader Alegeus Technologies announced its inaugural Healthcare Consumerism Index, which sought to measure consumer behavior and engagement during the healthcare purchasing process.