"I wouldn't necessarily say there's a way for employers to win."

That's Drew Albrecht's honest read on the health benefits market — and it's not a reason to give up, it's the reason most executives are losing money on a line item nobody's actually reading. Benefits get treated as a "set it and forget it" expense that renews once a year. Meanwhile the claims data sitting inside that renewal has been quietly telling a story nobody in the building bothered to open.

Drew is Director of Consulting and Operations at Cambridge, where he specializes in employee benefit strategy for middle-market employers. Seventeen years into group health benefits — he started in underwriting — he's built a practice around one expensive fact: healthcare inflation has run double digits for two decades, and the insurance carriers and pharmacy benefit  ...