The Alliance Awarded Two Healthcare Transformation Awards to Individuals Moving Healthcare Forward

Drew Leatherberry, President and Principal Advisor
Avergent

Leatherberry founded Avergent, a Wisconsin-based benefits advisement firm in 2019. Over the past 15 years, Leatherberry has started and led agencies with innovative approaches to managing healthcare costs.  

Since creating Avergent, Leatherberry has helped dozens of employers reduce premiums and expenses year-over-year while still offering low or even $0 deductibles for their employees. Using data analytics and proven practices, he designs health benefits plans that can reduce employers’ healthcare spending by 20% or more while achieving better health outcomes.  

Leatherberry has made a significant and positive impact on his clients, including Candace Meronk, director of association services at Team Schierl Companies, and Tim Schierl, chief executive officer at Team Schierl Companies. They said, “Drew is a pioneer in the much-needed healthcare ‘excavating’ in Wisconsin. He is passionate about truly helping both the employer and each individual insured and their families to have quality care and options to save. His integrity and dedication to this mission are unwavering. He believes in establishing valued partnerships that support a win-win model for all involved, including those at the point of delivery of quality care. We are proud to work with Drew and his team and are proud to be an employer that truly offers healthcare, not just a health plan. Leatherberry has and continues to advise and partner with us to accomplish this.”    

As a certified Health Rosetta Associate Advisor, Leatherberry leverages proven best practices from across the country to make healthcare affordable for plan members. He’s been recognized regionally and nationally as a voice for transformation in the healthcare benefits arena. 

Cynthia Fisher, Founder and Chairman
PatientsRightsAdvocates.org

Fisher founded PatientsRightsAdvocates.org, a nonprofit organization seeking systemwide healthcare price transparency, to give power to American consumers and employers to lower their costs of care and coverage through a functional marketplace. The organization’s methods include advocacy, testimony, media, legal research, and grassroots campaigns. 

Fisher was inspired to create this organization when she had a realization about how high healthcare prices were affecting Americans, even those with health insurance. Fisher said, “These are hardworking Americans with coverage. These are not the uninsured and the destitute, but now they’re destitute because of our broken healthcare system. This is just so wrong on so many levels. We are the payers of healthcare. It’s our wages. It’s our paychecks that pay for healthcare, and we have no voice in Washington. So, I decided to found PatientRightsAdvocate.org to represent the voice of the consumer.” 

Fisher asserts true healthcare price transparency will unleash a pro-consumer market where prices, quality, outcomes, and standards of care are known upfront. She believes what The Alliance has always believed, that price-empowered consumers will cause providers to compete by lowering prices, improving quality, and applying free market, value-based decision-making to healthcare. Fisher has also been instrumental in the passage of health price transparency and surprise billing legislation and regulations.