Podcast

How Paid Family Medical Leave Changes Employer Benefits Planning

State-paid family and medical leave programs keep expanding, and multi-state employers are usually the first to feel it through payroll deductions, private plan decisions, and coordination with existing leave policies. Hear what's changing, where employers get tripped up, and what to watch before the next state program goes live.

How Paid Family Medical Leave Changes Employer Benefits Planning

Paid family and medical leave is expanding fast, and the hardest part for employers isn't learning one state's rule. It's realizing how quickly the planning window closes once a workforce crosses state lines. Kaleb Bledsoe, CRC Benefits' National Ancillary Practice Leader, joins us to unpack where PFML stands today and why it now belongs at the center of benefits planning, not the edges. We cover how to map exposure by where employees live and work, not where a company is headquartered, why r...

How Benefits Brokers Can Lead The PEO Conversation Early

A client brings up a PEO before you do and suddenly you are playing defense, walking into a story someone else already wrote. We dig into why that’s happening more often right now and how benefits brokers can keep their place as the trusted advisor when a professional employer organization enters the chat early. The big shift we’re seeing is not hype, it’s pressure: HR complexity, multi-state compliance, remote employees, and the constant strain of rising medical costs. If you want to protec...

How Benefits Brokers Can Lead The PEO Conversation Early

PEOs are entering client conversations earlier, and that can put you on defense if someone else has already framed the story. HR complexity, multi-state compliance, remote employees, and rising medical costs are driving more interest in professional employer organizations. A stronger PEO strategy helps protect client relationships, expand the benefits toolkit, and lead smarter HR conversations.

When Required Notices Break Down - And How To Fill The Gap

Required notices often fall short when they are unclear, poorly timed, or easy to overlook. That leaves room for confusion, missed action, and added compliance risk. Stronger communication helps close the gap by making key information easier to understand, more relevant to employees, and more effective for the groups you support.

When Required Notices Break Down - And How To Fill The Gap

The fastest way to get burned in benefits compliance is believing a notice “counts” just because it was sent. We sit down with Misty Baker, our Director of Compliance and Government Affairs, to talk about why required notices break down in the real world and what brokers and employers can do to make the message actually stick. We get practical about the pressure points: COBRA timing (including the day-one initial notice), the decision to administer COBRA in-house versus using a third-party v...

Innovative Solutions for the Small Group Market with Tiffany Stiller and UnitedHealthcare's commercial CEO Dan Kueter

We sit down with Dan Kueter, CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s commercial business, to unpack small-group cost pressures and explore how employers can counter trend with level funding and more transparent, tech-enabled benefits plan design. UnitedHealthcare’s Surest health plan offers a clear path to lower costs and a better consumer experience. In this episode, Dan gives a deep dive on how Surest is built around more than 1 million variable value-based copays that vary based on a provider’s historic...

Innovative Solutions for the Small Group Market with Tiffany Stiller and UnitedHealthcare's Commercial CEO Dan Kueter

We sit down with Dan Kueter, CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s commercial business, to unpack small-group cost pressures and explore how employers can counter trend with level funding and more transparent, tech-enabled benefits plan design. UnitedHealthcare’s Surest health plan offers a clear path to lower costs and a better consumer experience. In this episode, Dan gives a deep dive on how Surest is built around more than 1 million variable value-based copays that vary based on a provider’s historic...

Pretty Easy Opportunity - Why to consider PEOs

Payroll tangles, patchwork compliance, and vendor sprawl can quietly drain a growing company. We sit down with CRC’s PEO leaders, Rob Schlossberg and Ari Wind, to map out when a professional employer organization unlocks simpler operations, stronger benefits, and fewer risks—and when it doesn’t. If your clients have multi-state teams, rising admin load, or employees asking for richer plans like IVF and modern voluntary benefits, this is a practical guide to the trade-offs that matter. We bre...

ICHRA: A Smarter Way to Offer Benefits

If the phrase one-size-fits-all makes you wince, this conversation will feel like a breath of fresh air. We sit down with Patti Reimer to unpack how Individual Coverage HRAs (ICHRAs) turn rigid group plans into flexible, budget-friendly benefits that employees actually want to use. Instead of forcing everyone into the same carrier and network, ICHRAs let employers set a defined contribution while employees choose plans that match their doctors, hospitals, and prescriptions no matter where the...

Breaking Down the One Big Beautiful Bill

Ready for a healthcare shake-up? The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on July 4, 2025, is set to reshape how Americans access and manage healthcare for years to come. In this first episode of the CRC Benefits Podcast, Misty Baker, CRC Benefits Director of Compliance, walks through the bill’s journey and breaks down four key provisions every benefits professional needs to know right now: Permanent telehealth for HSA participants – removing barriers to virtual careDependent C...