EP331: Employers Buyer Beware! Six Tricks Wellness and Point-solution Vendors Use to Overstate Their Results, With Al Lewis, Cofounder and CEO of Quizzify

 

In this episode, host Stacey Richter interviews Al Lewis, founder and “quizmeister-in-chief” of Quizzify, about the misleading tactics wellness and point-solution vendors use to inflate their cost savings claims. They explore statistical tricks like regression to the mean, flawed participant comparisons, trend inflation, and overstated engagement metrics. 

Al also shares advice for employers on spotting these deceptive practices and ensuring their brokers or benefit consultants are acting in their best interests. For more details, check out the Validation Institute’s PDF linked in the show notes. Links below.

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04:49 Are brokers going to have to become more transparent about where their money is coming from?
07:33 Are carriers transparent?
08:09 What’s the goal of the Validation Institute?
08:55 “You either get a true statement put up or learn what you have to do in order to get a true statement put up.”
11:18 How is Regression to the Mean (RTM) used in a flawed way?
16:32 “If you do wellness for employees instead of to employees, the people who want the wellness will be able to access it.”
21:13 What is plausibility testing?
23:17 What about actuaries and validation?
23:40 “That’s one of the reasons the Validation Institute exists, is because actuaries are easily corrupted.”
25:18 What is a prime example of population health economics?
26:20 What does it mean to overstate engagement?
27:15 “How often did you use this and was it useful?”
28:55 “Are you validated by the Validation Institute, and if not, why not?”