Pete and Julie welcome Dan Thompson, Chief Benefits Officer at Vensure Employer Solutions and longtime advocate for direct primary care (DPC), for a candid conversation on why the way Americans access and pay for healthcare is overdue for reinvention.
Dan traces how fee-for-service medicine, rising deductibles, fragmented benefit design, and misaligned incentives across insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals, and brokers have made primary care harder to access, all while employers and employees spend more each year.
Dan explains how DPC (Direct Primary Care) restores the doctor-patient relationship through a membership-based model designed around greater access, more personalized care, predictable costs, and fewer insurance barriers.
The group explores where DPC fits within an employer-sponsored benefits strategy, how it differs from concierge medicine, and why it should complement rather than replace major medical coverage. They also dig into self-funding, care navigation, provider quality, employer incentives, scaling DPC across varied workforces, and the role HR and finance leaders can play in moving from passive benefits purchasing to active healthcare stewardship.
Plus, what recent federal policy changes could mean for DPC, HSAs, and FSAs. How employers can begin evaluating options ahead of open enrollment, and why education, thoughtful regulation, and better advisor incentives will be critical to expanding access without recreating the complexity DPC was designed to remove.
Connect with Dan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danthompsonbenefits/
https://thompsonrisk.com/ https://vensure.com/
Links mentioned in the episode:
DPC Frontier: https://www.dpcfrontier.com/
*The annual Payroll Profession Confidence Index (PPCI) survey is open now through September 30, 2026. Payroll professionals and stakeholders interested in participating in the research can complete the survey at: https://www.payrollinfluences.com/ppci-2026.
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