Health Podcast Library
Episode 80

The billing problem is actually an affordability problem | Seth Cohen (Cedar)

Jun 10, 2026
18:52

Episode Description

Seth Cohen runs Cedar, which sits inside the bill-pay workflow for health systems across the country, meaning he sees the patient collections reality that most hospitals are still processing. Most providers still sort patients into commercial, government, and self-pay, a taxonomy that made sense 15 years ago and doesn't anymore. ACA premium churn is quietly flipping commercial AR to self-pay retroactively, Medicaid redeterminations hit January 1st, and the average hospital is already collecting about 40 cents on every patient dollar owed. For a $5B system, that's $250M in net income lost annually. Seth argues that the billing problem has quietly become an affordability problem, and that the fix isn't better statements or more outreach—it's meeting people where they actually are.


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Links referenced

Seth’s LinkedIn post on ACA premiums: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7453134273911455744/

How to contact Seth: seth@cedar.com


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