Danny Seidman on Sitting in the Employer's Corner, Breaking the Black Box, and Rethinking How Companies Buy Healthcare

From Academia to the Front Lines

Danny thought he'd spend his career in academic medicine, teaching residents and seeing patients. That changed when he was told to see five more patients a day or take a 20% pay cut. He started looking for something different and found SALTA Direct Primary Care, joining their startup office at a single on-site clinic in early 2019. Over the next seven years, that grew into a network of seven offices. Danny became senior medical director, managing operations, hiring, and still seeing patients full-time.

Then the pandemic hit. Patients told the practice they can't come to the office, so the care had to come to them. That's how Kin Health was born. It's a white-glove concierge practice where 90 to 95 percent of care happens at the patient's home. Patients typically come in only for annuals or serious procedures. Everything else is handled on-site with a nurse or medical assistant.

Why Employers Need a Chief Medical Advisor

Through his years running clinics and working on RFPs alongside employers, Danny noticed a pattern. Employers were spending $20 to $50 million a year on healthcare, often their second or third largest line item, but had no dedicated leadership overseeing that spend. An HR director or CFO would manage it alongside a hundred other priorities.

That gap is what led to DHS Advisors. Danny deliberately got a health counselor license in Michigan, which lets him advise but not sell products or serve as a broker of record. The distinction matters to him. He doesn't want to compete with brokers. He wants to sit on the employer's side of the table and help them make better decisions about a spend that deserves C-suite attention.

Start Low, Go Slow

When Danny works with a new employer, he resists the urge to overhaul everything at once. Trust, he says, matters more than case studies. He can show a CFO data from a similar group that saved money and improved outcomes, but that alone isn't enough. The employer has to trust the advisor before they'll act.

So he starts with small programs, things that don't disrupt the current plan design but deliver a visible win. Maybe it's a pharmacy initiative or a care navigation tool. Once the HR team sees results, they ask what's next. Before long, the conversation shifts toward a more modernized plan.

Breaking the Black Box

Danny's pitch to a fully funded employer often starts with a few simple questions. How much did you pay for an MRI? No idea. How much did you pay for this medication? No idea. How much did you pay for a ream of paper? Oh, we negotiated that, saved two pennies per ream. The contrast lands hard.

He tells employers they're running an $8 to $10 million healthcare business (for a 500 employee group) inside their business, but treating it like a black box they dump money into. Self-funding changes that. It introduces transparency, shows where the money goes, and lets employers make informed decisions about care and cost.

One analogy that hits home: he asks whether employees have corporate credit cards. Yes. Do they have a spending limit? Of course. Well, the health plan card is an unlimited credit card with no transparency and no cap. That reframing tends to shift the conversation from this is just how it is to this is something we should be managing.

Where the Savings Show Up

Danny uses concrete examples to bring the macro picture down to earth. In Michigan, physicians can buy medications at wholesale and dispense them on-site. An albuterol inhaler that costs $40 through the plan can be dispensed for $9. The savings are obvious, but the CFO's first reaction is often: But then we'd have to buy the inhaler. That cognitive dissonance, thinking of healthcare as someone else's problem even when you're already paying for it, is exactly what Danny works to break down.

When you do that across hundreds or thousands of employees, the numbers get serious. Less out of pocket for members, more savings for the plan, and added convenience. It's a win on every side.

Not Everyone Needs to Self-Fund, But Most Should

Danny hasn't personally encountered a situation where he's recommended an employer go back to fully funded. He's heard brokers advise it, only to have other advisor friends say the group was clearly a candidate for self-funding. Financial incentives, he notes, tend to shape recommendations, not because anyone is acting in bad faith, but because that's how the system works.

His general rule for the Midwest market: at 250 lives and above, self-funding is a clear path. Between 50 and 200 lives, it gets harder because of risk pool size and cash requirements. For those mid-sized groups, he sees ICHRA as a promising foundation, especially when paired with DPC and wraparound vendors. Health insurance goes back to covering what it should: surgery, hospital stays, and catastrophic events. Everything else gets procured directly.

Data Is the Starting Point

Danny's closing message is simple. Ask any CFO how they manage spend and efficiency in other parts of their business, and they'll show you a platform, a dashboard, a breakdown of every penny. Ask about healthcare, and they'll tell you their advising firm says it's proprietary, or that they pay what they pay because it's good for their people.

That gap in sophistication says more than any case study ever could. For employers who want to take control of their healthcare strategy, data and the right infrastructure aren't optional. They're where the conversation begins.