The $17B Aon-USI Deal & August Healthcare News | Last Month in Healthcare

"I look at it as an opportunity for everybody else. You're already seeing people on LinkedIn saying, I can't wait for the disruption." - Lamont Thurston, BeneRe

In this episode of Last Month in Healthcare, Producer Nathaniel and I sat down with Lamont Thurston, founder and CEO of BeneRe, to break down the biggest healthcare news stories of August 2026.

We started with Aon's $17 billion all-cash acquisition of USI, a deal that lit up LinkedIn for a week straight. KKR took USI private for $4.3 billion in 2014, so they're exiting at 3.4x, and Aon walks away with a serious middle-market position. Lamont's take on the antitrust question is worth hearing, and so is his argument that this creates more room for independents rather than less.

We also dug into Aon's projection of a 9.5% healthcare cost increase for 2027, pushing average cost per employee past $19,000 and marking the fourth consecutive year of near-double-digit trend. Lamont's point: four years in a row isn't a spike, it's structural, and that number is now eating wage increases.

Plus, employer use of the big three PBMs fell from 63.4% to 54.3% in a single year, driven mostly by employers under 1,000 lives, and the Fifth Circuit struck down the No Surprises benchmark over something called ghost rates.

To cap it off, we played an over/under game on ten healthcare numbers heading into 2027, and I answered a listener question about what to do when your biggest client's HR contact retires and the new one wants to bid everything out.

Thank you to Walk-On Clinic for sponsoring this episode. Visit walkonclinic.com to learn more.

Chapters:

(00:00:00) Intro: Lamont Thurston and Walk-On Clinic
(00:01:32) Aon Acquires USI for $17 Billion
(00:04:04) 9.5% Trend and the Fourth Straight Year
(00:08:16) Employers Are Leaving the Big Three PBMs
(00:10:47) Ghost Rates and the No Surprises Ruling
(00:13:57) Game: Healthcare Over/Under for 2027
(00:25:12) Ask Spencer Anything: Your Client's HR Contact Just Retired