Mission Matters Innovation with Adam Torres
Sep 23, 2026 · 21 min · 10 segments
In this episode of Mission Matters, [Adam Torres](https://www.instagram.com/askadamtorres/%20) interviews Bruce Wellman, retired CEO and pathologist at Carle Health in Urbana, Illinois, as part of…
Bruce WellmanGuest
Adam TorresHost
In private insurance, in our case, we have a very difficult, complicated system of pricing where the consumers don't see the price.
And so they see a small percentage of the price out of their income, but actually it's coming out of their income in multiple other ways.
Because of the fact we have a multi-tiered pricing structure between private insurance and public Medicaid and Medicare, where there's a 250% to 300% difference between what Medicare pays and what commercial insurance pays and individuals might pay, we have a very complicated environment in which to pay.
And these all come with other issues in the regulatory environment and the legal environment.
So about $26 billion of that expense of what maybe $2.5 direct expense to the U.S. citizen is administrative costs, whereas it's probably a third of that in the other countries.
We don't rank in the top one or two of 10 of the best performing health systems in the world.
Nobody's really happy with The system, the payers, the providers, and the patients all are not real happy with how we deliver care.
And so why are we different? Not good or bad, but this is the health system that's about, and it's really resulted in a very high-cost system that Produces great results in the acute environment where you recover from a heart attack or get cancer care.
And several other metrics were very highly ranked, but longevity and other public health type metrics were not.
In private insurance, in our case, we have a very difficult, complicated system of pricing where the consumers don't see the price.
And so they see a small percentage of the price out of their income, but actually it's coming out of their income in multiple other ways.
Because of the fact we have a multi-tiered pricing structure between private insurance and public Medicaid and Medicare, where there's a 250% to 300% difference between what Medicare pays and what commercial insurance pays and individuals might pay, we have a very complicated environment in which to pay.
And these all come with other issues in the regulatory environment and the legal environment.
So about $26 billion of that expense of what maybe $2.5 direct expense to the U.S. citizen is administrative costs, whereas it's probably a third of that in the other countries.
We don't rank in the top one or two of 10 of the best performing health systems in the world.
Nobody's really happy with The system, the payers, the providers, and the patients all are not real happy with how we deliver care.
And so why are we different? Not good or bad, but this is the health system that's about, and it's really resulted in a very high-cost system that Produces great results in the acute environment where you recover from a heart attack or get cancer care.
And several other metrics were very highly ranked, but longevity and other public health type metrics were not.
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