Episode
Managing Healthcare Benefits For 215,000 People, What The Job Actually Looks Like | Laura Tauber
- Published
- Feb 24, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1947
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Summary
What happens when a Wall Street bond analyst, urban planner, freelance filmmaker, and investment banker all become the same person, and that person ends up running healthcare benefits for 215,000 people at the University of California? Laura Tauber didn't follow the rulebook. She followed curiosity. Laura Tauber is the Executive Director of Self-Funded Health Plans at the University of California, Office of the President. She oversees PPO plans, HMO plans, and benefit partnerships with Anthem and Blue Shield for a workforce that spans everything from Nobel laureates to gardeners — active employees, early retirees, and families spread across California and beyond. 60% of that workforce is unionized. 5 of her campuses have no medical center. And 50-60% of total plan spend runs through UC's own health system, meaning she's constantly negotiating with the very hospitals she depends on. It started not in healthcare — but in natural resources. Laura studied environmental policy, nearly became a forester, spent a summer in rural Montana, and realized that wasn't the life for her. She pivoted to urban planning, moved to San Francisco in 1982 in the middle of a recession, couldn't find work, and called a friend in New York who happened to be hiring at a bond insurance company. That one phone call put her in healthcare. She became a healthcare bond analyst — spending years doing deep financial analysis for hospitals, understanding how CFOs and CEOs think, what keeps them up at night, what their numbers actually mean. Then she moved to Blue Shield of California. Then Accenture as a healthcare strategy consultant. Then a stint in investment banking — where her biggest revelation wasn't finance, it was that she hated banking but loved strategy. Then Scan Health Plan. Then Kaiser. A…