In this episode of Last Month in Healthcare, Producer Nathaniel and I sat down with Sebastian Sanchez, benefits consultant at RHSB in Dallas, to break down the biggest healthcare news stories of October 2026.
We started with Mark Cuban’s argument in Fortune that healthcare costs, not AI, are the real job killer. His fix is to break up the vertically integrated insurers and make provider contracts public. Sebastian sees employers starting to revolt against the system from the ground up. My take is that both can be true: if you replace someone with an AI tool, you don’t have to pay for their health plan either.
We also dug into KFF’s annual survey. Family coverage now averages $28,303, up 5%, while the worker’s share rose 9% to $7,471. At firms with fewer than 200 employees, nearly a third of workers pay $12,000 or more in premiums alone. Sebastian explains what those numbers look like to an hourly employee.
Plus, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle, and Axon pledged to speed up electronic prior authorization. A new bill from Rep. Frank Pallone would scrap No Surprises Act arbitration, which researchers say has added more than $22 billion in costs since 2022. And doctors’ offices owned by hospital systems are billing routine visits at hospital rates, sometimes 10 times more for the same care.
To cap it off, we played a Halloween edition of our fewer-ingredients game, and I answered a listener question about how to tell a client their plan is fine without looking like you’re not doing your job.
“You talk to the janitor or the field worker making hourly pay and looking at these figures, knowing we better stay healthy this year, because there’s no way we can afford this.” - Sebastian Sanchez, RHSB
Thank you to Walk-On Clinic for sponsoring this episode. Visit walkonclinic.com to learn more.
Chapters:
(00:00:00) Intro: Sebastian Sanchez and Walk-On Clinic
(00:01:52) Mark Cuban: Healthcare Costs, Not AI, Kill Jobs
(00:04:39) KFF Survey: The $28,303 Family Premium
(00:08:00) Big Tech’s Prior Authorization Pledge
(00:10:09) A Bill to Scrap No Surprises Arbitration
(00:13:30) Doctors’ Offices Billing as Hospitals
(00:17:05) Game: Halloween Candy, Fewer Ingredients
(00:23:38) Ask Spencer Anything: When the Plan Is Fine
