Joseph Savasta, HarmonyRx

Joseph N. Savasta is a very busy man.

In addition to his role as CEO and founder of HarmonyRx, a transparent, clinically driven pharmacy benefits organization serving employers, unions and other plan sponsors, he is the president of J.N. Savasta Corp. and has worked in leadership roles at the benefits consulting and administration organizations Adesso Benefits, Innovative MGU, and Savasta and Company.

Savasta lives in Oyster Bay Cove, New York, not far from where he grew up in Huntington. HarmonyRx, founded in 2004 as part of his broader employee benefits ecosystem, has grown into a fully integrated pharmacy benefits organization. The company now has 63 employees and serves approximately 225,000 members, operating on a 100% pass-through model that aligns its incentives with those of its clients.

He says he has “almost always worked” at one job or another since he was 10 years old.

Savasta’s first job was spending weekends in his actuary father’s office, logging data on key punch cards.

“We went in to help him out, partly our way to spend time with him, but working was also required,” he recalls.

As he got older, he mowed lawns, caddied and worked as a lifeguard. At home, after his parents’ divorce, he helped his single mother raise his younger brother and sister. The combination of constant employment and family responsibility formed an early template of accountability and service.

He was close to both of his parents, but closest to his father.

“He was funny for an actuary. His favorite joke was, ‘What’s the difference between an actuary and a Sicilian actuary?’ An actuary will tell you how many people are going to die, but a Sicilian actuary will give you their names,” Savasta says. “Believe it or not, that got big laughs in the actuarial field.”

When Savasta talks about him, the affection is evident, and it is clear how much he still misses him.

“He was firm but light and just a warm guy. When my parents separated, he became even warmer, and so it was great. We ended up being extremely close; he was literally one of my closest friends. I even think about him now, probably every day — ‘Hi, Pop, what do you think?’ That type of thing.”

His father’s work ethic can be traced back through the generations of Savasta’s family tree to their immigrant beginnings. Joseph’s middle name, Neil, was his father’s name. But to many, his father was known as Nat, after his own father, Natali. The drive to assimilate had real consequences for the family’s identity and language. Although Savasta’s daughter is now fluent in Italian after living in Milan for four years, she is the only one in their family who is, because earlier generations were discouraged from speaking it.

“My grandfather wouldn’t let any of us speak Italian,” he says. “Even on Sunday dinners, all the cousins and the grandchildren had to leave the room when they spoke Italian,” he says. “Surprisingly enough, my mother spoke Italian, but she didn’t speak Sicilian, and so they only had their conversations in Sicilian. Maybe that’s why they’re not together. Who knows?” he adds with a laugh.

Savasta is a cum laude graduate of the University at Buffalo with a degree in business management. He attended graduate school at New York University in the evenings, studying international business but did
not finish.

“I always wanted to be on Wall Street. I loved numbers, and I wanted to be down there, putting together deals that required thought, investment banking and leveraged buyouts — those were all relatively new in the ’80s, or at least from a market standpoint,” he says.

Instead, he found himself working in the equities department of an insurance agency.

“It was really, really boring, so I started an employee benefit consulting firm,” he says.

That decision marked the beginning of a career spent building consulting, administrative and pharmacy benefit organizations that, over time, would culminate in HarmonyRx’s transparent, clinically focused model.

Over time, Savasta has watched the broader market move toward the principles on which HarmonyRx was founded. New federal and state transparency rules are forcing pharmacy benefit managers to reveal more about pricing, rebates and administrative practices — changes that, in his view, largely validate his long-standing approach. He also points to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical models, biosimilars and new distribution channels as forces reshaping the market, adding that growing government involvement in drug pricing will likely influence the industry for years to come.

“We view increased transparency requirements as a positive development for the industry. In fact, we welcome it,” he says. “Because transparency has always been a core component of our business model, many of the recent regulatory changes align closely with the approach we have already taken.”

Honesty was one of the most important values Savasta learned from his father, something that lives on through Savasta’s personal life and in HarmonyRx.

“As my father always said, it’s about getting them to trust you, and if you do the right work, they’ll always trust you, and you just keep moving. It’s the honest ones that have the longevity and do well, and that’s Dad. That’s all I can say.”