A finding worth discussing. Evidence worth checking.
Practical guidance on reading Calliope findings: where the evidence comes from, what a benchmark means, and what to do when a filing leaves questions open.
Published
Original analysis,newest first.
Studies, case studies and references built from six years of filings and the carriers' own indexes. Each one names its sources and its limits.
StudyOctober 2026
One hundred eleven pharmacy RFPs.What the packet demands, and what the record already shows.
Public requests for proposals for pharmacy benefit management, pharmacy consulting and audit, retiree drug plans and GLP-1 carve-outs, read against board records, prior awards and the carriers' own indexes. Four in ten packets name the incumbent PBM; one in ten states the drug spend. Ten worked examples from state health plans to an 835-life city, twenty-one traced awards, and a bidder's playbook for clearing the minimums and bringing the record the packet withheld.
Ninety-three broker RFPs.What the packet asks, and what the record already knows.
A year of public requests for proposals for benefits brokerage and consulting, matched against six years of filings and the carriers' own indexes. One in ten packets names the incumbent. The filing names it in fourteen of twenty-four private employers. Ten worked examples of what the record adds, and a playbook for answering the criteria issuers publish with the facts they withhold.
Who runs the pharmacy benefit,and whether they say so themselves.
Every PBM that appears on a health plan's Schedule C, sorted by who owns it, where the claims actually adjudicate, and whether the pricing model it markets is the one its structure supports. "Transparent" is now on every large PBM's website. This is how to tell the label from the structure.
Self-funded is not invisible.You have to know where to look.
All 32 NFL clubs are on the Form 5500 record. Twenty-one self-fund, ten file under a parent company, three share one league plan. A case study in what a self-funded filing still shows, where the connection points are, and how the carriers' own indexes fill the one gap the form leaves.
Calliope combines six years of public benefits filings with carrier-published Transparency in Coverage data and public research. Monthly updates add available filings and carrier-published records. The refresh date describes when data was added; the sources themselves describe different periods. A provider named in a past filing may not be the provider today.
When reviewing an account, check the filing year and the publication date of any additional evidence. Separate what a source explicitly reports from what Calliope infers. Transparency in Coverage features are in Beta.
Public filings are self-reported. Calliope checks known error patterns, including duplicate schedules and misused premium columns, and excludes affected records from relevant benchmarks. A source citation still needs to be read in context.
Calliope computes fee comparisons from its filing corpus, using service-code and size segments. Before interpreting a difference, check the service category, comparison period, and denominator used in the calculation.
Ask whether the services and funding structure are comparable, whether compensation disclosures are complete, and whether data-quality flags affect the record. Higher reported compensation may reflect differences that the filing alone cannot explain.
Above-benchmark compensation is not evidence of wrongdoing. Use the comparison to focus a documented review and identify the additional information needed.
Negative space is the gap between what the filing shows and what the employer’s benefits picture suggests should be there.
Illustrative example · Fictional accounts and data
One filing. A broader benefits picture.
Example
5,000employees at Alder Manufacturing
Form 5500 · 2024
Small insured medical plan
300people covered by this disclosed plan
Kaiser · Fully insured medical
Carrier-published TiC · Aug 2026 · Beta
ASO relationship identified
AlderAdministrator
Evidence of an administered medical arrangement beyond the insured plan.
The insured plan may be only one part of the employer’s coverage.
How to read the gap
Employees and covered lives are different measures. This is not a calculation of uncovered employees. Confirm employer identity, source periods, and current plan documents before concluding how the arrangements fit together.
“Not disclosed” does not mean “does not exist.” Missing filing or TiC evidence alone is not a compliance finding. Carrier-published features are Beta.
The study gives you the market.CalliopeSales gives you the approach.
CalliopeSales is Calliope's consulting arm: market strategy and go-to-market work for benefits teams, led by Becca Johnson. Flow is the software. This is the working session on how your firm, your territory and your producers should use it.
A read of your niche: the accounts shaped like what you already win, and the RFPs posting in it.
The positioning: how to answer the criteria issuers publish with the facts they withhold.
A plan for the team: who prospects what, from which signals, on what cadence.
Tell us what you are working onReplies come from Becca, not a sequence