Benefits with Friends Podcast

All the Solutions and Strategies Benefit Decision Makers Need to Take Control of the Cost and Quality of their Group Health Plan and Become the Employer of Choice.

Meet Our Host

Lou is the original Benefit Optimization Officer.

Lou’s career in benefits has spanned 30 years.   He has assisted thousands of employers navigate the complex world of Managed Care either directly or indirectly in his capacity as general agent.  He has seen the deterioration of employer sponsored health plans orchestrated by the managed care delivery system. 

These days he concentrates on his own agency, BritePath, where he is Founder and Chief Benefit Optimization Officer with a passion of helping forward-thinking benefit decision makers and their people transform their outdated health plans into a high-performance health plan that empowers the American Healthcare Consumer and elevates their companies.

Lou is proud to be a member of the Health Rosetta; an eco-system of forward-thinking advisors and solution partners that share his passion for helping people and businesses customize health plans that enhance benefits, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.

In addition to the Health Rosetta, Lou is a member of Aspirational Healthcare, the Talent Champions Council, the Forbes Business Council and recently became a member Free Market Medical Association.

Lou is the host of a LinkedIn Live show and podcast titled Benefits with Friends, as well as, the author of his upcoming book Managed Care: Wall Street’s Favorite Spectator Sport in which he focuses on how managed care groomed the American Healthcare Consumer and used the lack of data to construct a web of hidden profits, artificial costs and misaligned incentives.

What is the Benefits with Friends Podcast all about?

We recognize how complex healthcare and health insurance to the average consumer.
We also realize that the healthcare systems and insurer like it that way.
They make both huge profits due to a lack of transparency and inability of the consumer to make informed decisions.
This has resulted in excessive medical debt, skyrocketing premiums and unmanageable out-of-pocket costs.

It doesn’t have to be  this way. but a few things need to happen to solve this complex problem:

  • We need to eliminate the misaligned incentives.
  • We need access to actionable data to make informed decisions.
  • We need consumers to demand solutions and strategies that build high-performance health plans.
  • We need to put the patient-doctor relationship first.
  • We need patients to easily access the highest quality care available.
  • Most importantly we need to elevate the IQ of the American Healthcare Consumer.

If you’re a benefit decision maker or business owner that wants to take control of your healthcare spend, then you’ve come to the right podcast.

Join us to learn how to transform your underperforming group health plan into a high-performance health plan capable of lowering costs by 25% or more.

Listen to Podcast

Episode Blogs

  • BWF 9 | American Healthcare Consumer
    For the past three decades, the American healthcare consumer has been the leverage used by insurance carriers and healthcare systems against each other. Which strategies must be implemented to give them back this leverage and simply settle with the lowest plans? Louis Bernardi talks with Chris Hamilton of Hotchkiss Insurance
  • BWF 8 | Insurance Claims Data
    There is probably no aspect of healthcare that has changed as dramatically over the last few years as insurance claims data. For every C-Suite leader or HR manager to justify their next rate increase, they must have the right amount of data at their disposal, gathered from the clients themselves.
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  • BWF 6 | Cost Of Healthcare
    Marshall Allen’s book, “Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win,” shows individuals and employers how they can push back against the high cost of health care. It’s led to Allen Health Academy, which takes the principles of the book and communicates
  • BWF 5 | Health Plans
    Emma Fox is Partner and COO of E-Powered Benefits. Her firm helps employers throughout the US customize health plans using alternative healthcare models that are capable of significantly enhancing benefits for members while at the same time lowering the cost by 20-40% (or more). The key is increasing awareness and resetting customer