Engage
Written analysis of what Indiana public employers are actually paying for employee benefits, why the number is what it is, and which parts of it a unit of government can do something about. Every figure names its source in the research notes.
The journal
Every factual claim is paired with the study, filing or statute it came from, so readers can check the argument directly instead of taking our word for it.
July 2026 · About a nine-minute read
SEA 1 property-tax relief is pulling revenue out of local budgets through 2031 while employer health cost compounds at the fastest rate in fifteen years. Three years of renewal data, Indiana’s consolidating carrier landscape, the projected school revenue loss, the questions the Aim Medical Trust’s own published material raises, and what SEA 3 now requires of every third-party administrator and pharmacy benefit manager serving an Indiana public plan.
Senate Enrolled Act 270 and what a township merger does to the people who work for a township. Who inherits the employees, what happens to a plan year that is already underwritten, and why the receiving unit has a budget problem nobody has priced yet.
A pharmacy benefit agreement read clause by clause: the definition of a generic, the spread, the rebate pass-through language, and the audit rights that decide whether any of the rest of it can be verified. No vendor is named.
Webinars
Three sessions are being built. None of them has a date yet, and rather than publish one we intend to move, we will send it to the people who asked for it as soon as it is fixed. Sessions run about forty minutes with the last fifteen for questions, they are free, and they carry no sales segment. Where a session earns continuing-education credit we will say which board granted it and for how many hours; until then assume it does not.
For: Clerk-treasurers, auditors, and anyone who signs the Annual Financial Report
Where employee benefits actually land on the Gateway filing, why D107 and D808 are not the same thing, what a benefits-to-salary ratio of 7% versus 47% is really telling you, and how to find the fund your benefits went into when the headline line reads zero. We run your unit live if you want us to.
For: Plan sponsors, HR directors, and boards of finance
The four duties IC 27-1-25.5 places on third-party administrators and pharmacy benefit managers from 1 July 2025, the documents that would evidence each of them, and the request letter that asks for those documents without starting a fight. We are not counsel and the session says so throughout.
For: Township trustees and boards, and the counties and cities that may absorb them
The twelve SEA 270 criteria, the December list, the March petition window, and then the part nobody has scheduled: the census change, the mid-year renewal, and the benefits line the receiving unit did not adopt.
The same weekly email carries the session announcements, so one address covers both. If you would rather have the date and nothing else, say so when you reply to the first issue and we will take you off the letter and leave you on the invitations.
Editorial standard
Research briefs carry a figures table: the number, what it measures, and the study or filing it came from. Where a figure is ours — a ratio computed from an Annual Financial Report, say — the notes say that too, including the line of the filing. A number that cannot name where it came from does not get published.
We make structural arguments about how public-sector benefits are bought and administered. We do not use a named carrier, administrator or pharmacy benefit manager as a villain, and where we describe one we describe it from its own published material or an executed public document.
The analysis makes its own case. Articles do not interrupt the evidence with a sales message; the contact page is where it has always been.
Each subject is divided into a clear narrative article and, where the evidence warrants it, a separate research brief. Readers can follow the argument first and inspect the underlying figures second.
The full written substance is published as soon as the research is ready. Narrative articles explain the issue; research briefs preserve the figures table, definitions and source links.
The weekly letter
One email a week about Indiana public-sector benefits: what changed in the filings, what moved at the Statehouse, what a new DLGF or Gateway release actually says, and where the tools on this site have been updated. Written by a person, sent to a list we do not rent, share or sell.