Better care
- For employees
- Care provided without worrying if their care will be delayed, denied, or have to be defended.
- For employers
- Necessary care for your employees to keep them healthy without disruption.
Better care. Better price. Better experience.
Better benefits for employers and employees who count on them
Healthcare costs are climbing faster than they have in more than 20 years. VQJ was started to change the way that employers, employees, and care providers interact with one another to provide a more transparent healthcare transaction with an experience that puts the patient & physician back at the center of healthcare.
It’s your money and your employees’ money. You should be able to see where every dollar goes.
Healthcare costs are rising at their fastest rate in more than 20 years, with no sign of slowing down.
Employers face a bigger renewal every year. Employees feel it in their paychecks: what workers pay toward family coverage jumped 9% this year, while wages grew just 3.7%. Raising deductibles and trimming benefits only moves the cost from one to the other.
- $28,303 average family premium in 2026, up 5% from 2025
- 387% increase in the average family premium since 1999
- $7,471 paid by the average worker toward family coverage, up 9% in one year
- 3.7% wage growth over the same year
- $9,687 paid by workers at small companies toward family coverage
- 28% growth in family premiums over the last five years
- 8.2% projected rise in employer health costs for 2027, the biggest jump since 2003
Sources: KFF 2026 Employer Health Benefits Survey and KFF premiums and worker contributions, 1999–2026; Mercer National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, preliminary 2027 results
Benefits built around direct relationships with doctors and providers, so more time goes to care and less money goes to everything else.
Better price
- For employees
- $0 care for services and transparent costs up front.
- For employers
- Lower, more predictable healthcare spending, with prices agreed upfront.
Better experience
- For employees
- Call or text a concierge to help navigate care & not worry if you can afford care.
- For employers
- Provide your employees with the best possible benefit they will thank you for.
Direct Health Plans
A direct health plan connects your health insurance plan straight to doctors, surgery centers, care providers, and hospitals, at prices agreed upfront. Fewer middlemen means everyone spends less and access to care becomes easier.
Direct care is already working for employers
47%
of the time, a hospital’s cash price was lower than or equal to the median price insurers paid for the same service at the same hospital, across 70 common services. Nonprofit and government hospitals were more likely to offer lower cash prices.
Hospital price transparency data via Turquoise Health. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2023
60%
of insurer-negotiated rates were higher than the cash price a self-paying patient was charged for the same service, such as office visits, CT scans and MRIs.
Gerardo Ruiz Sánchez, economist, about 2,200 hospitals. Trinity College
50%
of U.S. hospitals set cash prices below the median insurance-negotiated rate for shoppable services like lab work, MRIs, CT scans and joint replacements.
1 call
is often all it takes. Cash quotes gathered by phone for outpatient procedures like routine colonoscopies regularly came in below average insurer-negotiated rates across several U.S. cities.
Phone survey of hospitals and surgery centers. Cicero Institute, 2023
Studies compare published cash prices with insurer-negotiated rates. Prices for your plan depend on your employees, plan design and providers.
What a direct health plan can include
- Direct contracts with providers. Agreed, upfront prices for healthcare services with physicians, surgeries, imaging, surgery centers, specialists, and hospitals.
- Self-funded and level-funded plans. See your own claims data and keep the money you don’t spend on claims, instead of handing it to a carrier.
- Transparent pharmacy programs. Prescription benefits with clear drug pricing, so you know what you’re paying for each medication.
- Care navigation. Help for employees to find high-quality, fairly priced care and use the lowest-cost options in their plan.
- Direct primary care. A flat monthly fee gives employees unlimited visits with their own primary care doctor, often with same-day appointments and no copay.
How we build your program
-
Review
We look at your claims, renewal and current plan to see where your healthcare dollars are going.
-
Design
We build a plan around direct relationships with doctors and providers, and show you the expected savings.
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Launch and measure
We help your employees understand and use the program, then report on results at every renewal.
Products & services
-
Medical
Fully insured, level-funded and self-funded plans, designed around how your employees actually use care.
-
Dental
Preventive-first plans that make cleanings and checkups easy to use, with options for major care and orthodontics.
-
Vision
Eye exams, glasses and contacts, with networks that include the eye doctors your employees already see.
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Life & AD&D
Group term life and accidental death coverage, with the option for employees to buy more for their families.
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Disability
Short- and long-term disability coverage that keeps a paycheck coming when an illness or injury keeps someone from working.
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Executive benefits
Supplemental disability, life insurance and other benefits that help you recruit and keep your key leaders.
We also help with
- Accident, critical illness & hospital coverage
- HSA, FSA & HRA accounts
- Employee assistance programs
- Open enrollment & employee education
- Benefits administration technology
- ACA, ERISA & COBRA compliance support
Who We Are
We are an employee benefits insurance agency dedicated to delivering the utmost value for employers & their employees. We are re-engineering the healthcare benefits landscape to create a new environment that centers around the people who should benefit.
Why
Over $5 Trillion reasons why. Healthcare continues to consume more company and American dollars each year while value seems to diminish. New rails need to be established to bring the focus back to the core of who matters most in the healthcare relationship.
Mission
Laser-focused on creating new healthcare ecosystem rails to eliminate as much friction as possible, deliver maximum value, & craft a great experience.
The Founder
Jared Meays has spent over 15 years as an employee benefit advisor helping employers manage their benefit programs. His experience helped shape who he has become today: a trailblazer on a path to create a better healthcare environment for patients, employers, physicians, & care providers.
Meays’s passion for understanding the complexity and real challenges in today’s healthcare system fuels him to focus on removing as many barriers to direct care as possible. Employers can invest more of those dollars in growing their business & employees can keep more of their dollars to grow their lives.
Vision-Quest-Journey (VQJ) was started with the simple premise that “A better path does exist. We just have to go find it & share it.”
Our Values
- Trust
- Focus
- Courage
Are you ready to learn more?
Tell us a little about your company and we’ll follow up to talk through your current benefits and where you could save.
- OfficeOmaha, NE
- Phone402-309-5549
- Emailjmeays@vqjinsurance.com