Mike Gaal
Mike Gaal is a principal and consulting actuary with the Chicago office of Milliman. He joined the firm in 2014.
Experience
With more than 25 years of experience, Mike mainly works in the commercial market, with a deep background in advising health plans and employer-sponsored health plans. He covers all aspects of plan management (vendor procurement, plan design, modeling, forecasting) and has often acted as an independent consultant, such as verifying savings methods or serving as an expert witness.
Mike is passionate about improving the US healthcare system and he has been a leader in Milliman’s efforts to create actionable insights from enriching publicly available healthcare price transparency data. Mike and his team support health plans, providers, employers, and other industry stakeholders to better analyze and understand the data. He is a regular speaker and writer on the topic of price transparency.
Before coming to Milliman, Mike worked for a firm that focused on consulting to hospitals, health systems, and medical groups, mainly advising on the topics of compensation and benefits for employees, physicians, and executives.
In addition, Mike spent nearly 10 years as a healthcare benefits consultant to large employers in the general industry where he assisted employers on benefit design, flexible benefits pricing, vendor procurement, data analytics, and the impact of health care reform on employee benefit programs.
- Machine Readable to Business Interpretable: Making Heads and Tails of Healthcare Price Transparency Data. 3rd Virtual National Healthcare Transparency and No Surprise Act Summit, April 2024.
- Webinar: Harnessing the Power of Price Transparency: A Game-Changer for Employer Benefit Plans. Milliman, Purchaser Business Group on Health and Turquoise Health, March 2024.
- The “F” Word (Fiduciary). Pittsburgh Business Group on Health, 2023 Symposium, September 2023.
- 2023 Milliman Medical Index. milliman.com, May 2023.
- The Promise and Complexity of Price Transparency: Turning Massive Amounts of Data into Meaningful, Actionable Benefits Strategy. Business Group on Health, 2023. Annual Conference, April 2023.
- Data transparency: Uncovering hidden healthcare insights. Milliman Labs, December 2022.
- 2022 Milliman Medical Index. milliman.com, May 2022.
- Transparency in Coverage Final Rules - FAQs: What are the implications for health plans and other stakeholders? milliman.com, April 2022.
- Hospital price transparency: Data or information? milliman.com, September 2021.
- Understanding the evolution of reference-based pricing and considerations for employers evaluating the approach. milliman.com, February 2021.
- Webinar: ACA + ACB: What does the next SCOTUS decision mean for private markets? Panel discussion,November 2020.
- Medicare for All sounds expensive. How expensive? Here are three questions you need to answer. milliman.com, December 2019.
- Is direct-to-provider contracting a potential silver bullet for achieving value-based care for employer-sponsored plans? milliman.com, July 2019.
- The Elusive Nature of Private Exchanges. Bloomberg BNA, Pension and Benefits Daily, March 2016.
Professional Designations
- Fellow, Society of Actuaries
- Member, American Academy of Actuaries
Education
- BS, Applied Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon University
- Executive Master of Business Administration, Quantic School of Business & Technology
Publications