Sidecar Health CEO Patrick Quigley: Fixing Health Insurance by Rewiring the Incentives

What happens when a health plan stops trying to optimize a legacy system and instead rebuilds the model itself?

In this episode of Bright Spots in Healthcare, Eric Glazer sits down with Patrick Quigley, CEO and co-founder of Sidecar Health, for a candid conversation about redesigning health insurance around transparency, incentives, and consumer agency.

Rather than focusing on incremental reform, this discussion explores what changes when members can see prices before they receive care, when benefits are structured around clear dollar amounts instead of opaque contracts, and when savings can be shared directly with the individual making the decision.

Patrick walks through why traditional insurance design obscures cost and distorts behavior, how employers are responding to rising spend and limited visibility, and what it takes operationally to challenge long standing assumptions about how plans should work.

Using examples from employer adoption, member purchasing behavior, and provider pricing dynamics, the conversation surfaces how transparency becomes more than a feature. It becomes the foundation for accountability and market discipline.

This episode is designed for health plan leaders, employers, and innovators who are no longer asking whether affordability is a problem, but are questioning whether the current structure can solve it.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why price opacity persists in traditional insurance models

• What changes when members see real time, upfront pricing

• How defined benefit structures alter purchasing decisions

• Why employers are increasingly open to alternative plan design

• How financial alignment influences utilization patterns

• The operational realities of building a new insurance model

• What industry leaders must unlearn to create sustainable affordability

About Patrick Quigley:

Patrick Quigley is the CEO and co-founder of Sidecar Health, a health insurance company built on a transparency first model. Under his leadership, the organization has focused on creating plans that show members clear prices, allow them to choose providers freely, and share savings when care costs less than expected. His work centers on restoring consumer visibility and aligning incentives across members, providers, and employers to address the structural drivers of healthcare cost growth.
Learn more about Patrick Quigley - https://www.linkedin.com/in/quigleyp/
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About Bright Spots Ventures:

Bright Spots Ventures is a healthcare strategy and engagement company that creates content, communities, and connections to accelerate innovation. We help healthcare leaders discover what's working, and how to scale it. By bringing together health plan, hospital, and solution leaders, we facilitate the exchange of ideas that lead to measurable impact. Through our podcast, executive councils, private events, and go-to-market strategy work, we surface and amplify the "bright spots" in healthcare—proven innovations others can learn from and replicate. At our core, we exist to create trusted relationships that make real progress possible. Visit our website at www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com.

Visit our website:  www.brightspotsinhealthcare.com.

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