Learning resources on self-funding

Podcasts

ShiftShapers

Hosted by experienced advisor, David Saltzman, “ShiftShapers” showcases industry leaders who are taking the transformative shifts in the insurance and employee benefits industry and shaping them into new business models, products and best practices.

NAHU Healthcare Happy Hour

The NAHU Healthcare Happy Hour podcast by the National Association of Health Underwriters includes a recap of the week’s top issues in healthcare and health insurance politics and policy.

Phia Podcast

The Phia Group, LLC is an experienced provider of health care cost containment techniques offering comprehensive consulting services, legal expertise, plan document drafting, subrogation and overpayment recovery, claim negotiation, and plan defense designed to control costs and protect plan assets.

Books

Breaking the Status Quo by Nelson Griswold

The visionary NextGeneration Benefits Advisers who have authored this book have committed to breaking through the status quo in both benefits and healthcare and are helping employers across the country provide better benefits AND reduce the cost of those benefits. They present real world strategies and ideas straight from the trenches, not the half-baked product of ivory-tower thinking and conjecture.

The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream by Dave Chase

Most CEOs, HR leaders, and others have been led to believe that controlling health benefits costs isn't possible. The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream shows how this just isn't true. It's an inside look into how public and private employers and unions across the U.S. are reducing their spending by 20% or more, while improving care quality and access, by taking control of the purchasing process, aligning economic incentives, and applying simple, practical, and proven approaches.

Catastrophic Care by David Goldhill

Catastrophic Care is an eye-opening book that explodes the myth that Medicare and insurance coverage can make care cheaper and improve our health. Efforts to reform the system, including the Affordable Care Act, will do nothing to address the waste of the healthcare industry, which currently costs the country nearly $2.5 trillion annually and an estimated 200,000 deaths from preventable errors. Catastrophic Care proposes a completely new approach, one that will change the way you think about one of our most pressing national problems.

Cracking Health Costs: How to Cut Your Company's Health Costs and Provide Employees Better Care by Tom Emerick and Al Lewis

Cracking Health Costs reveals the best ways for companies and small businesses to fight back, right now, against rising health care costs. This book proposes multiple, practical steps that you can take to control costs and increase the effectiveness of the health benefit. Working hand-in-hand with their employees, businesses need to ensure that, whenever feasible, employees with the most expensive diagnoses get optimal treatment at hospitals not practicing “volume-driven” medicine for higher profits.

Unnacountable by Martin Makary

Dr. Marty Makary is co-developer of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's bestseller The Checklist Manifesto. A Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a system that frustrates doctors and patients alike.  Dr. Makary describes the problem and presents disruptive innovations from success stories around the U.S. The ideas are powerful, but even more important, they are home-grown by the doctors on the front-lines of American healthcare. Unaccountable is a powerful, no-nonsense, non-partisan diagnosis for healing our hospitals and reforming our broken healthcare system.

Email news digests

MyHealthGuide by Ernie Clevenger (weekly)

Daily Insurance Report by Walter Bernard Podgurski (daily)

BONUS! Julien’s favorite books on sales:

The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.

Mastering the Complex Sale by Jeff Thull

Continuing to evolve the breakthrough thinking of his best-selling classic Mastering the Complex Sale, in this new edition Jeff Thull once again pushes the envelope to give professionals - from individuals struggling with their first call, to senior executives trying to figure out why their value strategy is falling short - a comprehensive guide to navigate and win high-stakes sales. Based on continuing research and loaded with examples, Mastering the Complex Saleprovides detailed models, tools and a comprehensive road map for unleashing the potential buried in your company’s value capabilities and the products and services you sell, service and protect.

Spin Selling by Neil Rackham

Written by Neil Rackham, former president and founder of Huthwaite corporation, SPIN Selling is essential reading for anyone involved in selling or managing a sales force. Unquestionably the best-documented account of sales success ever collected and the result of the Huthwaite corporation's massive 12-year, $1-million dollar research into effective sales performance, this groundbreaking resource details the revolutionary SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) strategy.