Podcast Recommendation: The Edutainer with Dr. Erin L. Albert

Dr. Erin L. Albert is currently the VP Trade Relations and General Counsel at the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company PBC, and like her colleague and company founder Alex Oshmyansky, as well as Mr. Cuban himself, she has become a public face of the startup since communication is largely word-of-mouth and via social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). Her Twitter feed, for example, had nearly 4,000 followers @ErinLAlbert although some have found that changes implemented since Mr. Musk acquired the company via a massive loan that some of their follower numbers have been adversely impacted. She doesn't have as many as Mark Cuban himself, but she often breaks news on new drugs carried or price reductions, and Mark Cuban himself will often re-Tweet her posts.

Back in May 2022, Erin Albert wrote a LinkedIn article entitled "Bit by a Shark: 5 Reasons Why I Joined Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, PBC" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bit-shark-5-reasons-why-i-joined-mark-cuban-cost-plus-erin-l-/ explaining her decision to join the company.

But today's post has little to do with Dr. Albert's corporate role.

Instead, it's about her role as a podcaster.

She was an active podcaster at "The Edutainer with Dr. Erin L. Albert" https://anchor.fm/theedutainer although her last podcast there was released on July 31, 2022. It may be based on how much time she has to dedicate to it.

For the month of July 2022, she ran a podcast series which she called "Red, Blue and You: Ways to Save on Rx Drugs in the USA". Initially, I wasn't sure I even wanted to listen to a podcast on the subject. But after listening to the first episode, I was persuaded. The "Red, Blue and You" podcast featured a series of interesting yet incredibly short podcasts (only about 10 minutes per episode), yet they were still pretty informative.

Her first tip was to obtain what's called the "SBC" from your employer. SBC means "Summary of Benefits & Coverage" (she shared a sample (blanked out) at https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Regulations-and-Guidance/Downloads/SBC-Template.pdf

That proved pretty useful, and yet in my 30-year career, I can honestly say that not one human resource person ever mentioned the document, and in fact, some had never heard of such a thing and looked at me like I was an alien from another planet when I asked. But she rightly observes that having the SBC actually documents specifics you'll likely need to understand the pharmacy benefit component of your employer-sponsored healthcare insurance plan.

I won't list all of the "Red, Blue and You" episodes here, but instead, below is the first episode of that "mini-series" and is a good place to start. The episode is below, or you can visit the podcast website at https://anchor.fm/theedutainer/episodes/S6-5---Red--Blue-and-You-Ways-to-Save-on-Rx-Drugs-in-the-USA-part-22-e1lahjp/a-a874ats