Recommended Reading
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.
The book opens the door to learning from these top performing benefits purchasers. It's built on the the real-life examples and successes of top performers across sectors, a field guide for how CEO's and HR leaders can improve their bottom line while improving their employees' own bottom line and health.
Understanding how we can free up health care dollars to accomplish these goals is what this book sets out to do. It walks readers through how much money is wasted on our current catastrophic health care system at the national, state, and employer levels. It further explains how we allowed that system to create subsequent public health crises. Finally, it points the way to end the current system by designing low-cost, high-quality, parent-approved Health plans. We’re spending more than enough money to get the best health care system in the world. The only real question is whether we can massively replicate what we already know works beautifully. As a country, we can easily afford to implement this model as it’s much less costly than the disaster that is our status quo health system. Changing the world starts with changing health care’s status quo, and to do that all of us must first rally together. I am counting on you to rise to the challenge to drive change. With this book as your guide, I encourage you to continue to push forward the health care revolution that’s gaining more and more momentum each and every day. Health care isn’t expensive. What is expensive is profiteering, price-gouging and edifice complexes that prioritize building Taj Mahals over disaster readiness. After all, only $0.27 of every $1 ostensibly spent on health care goes to nurses, physicians and other clinicians.
Life & Death Decisions In The C-Suite: How The U.S. Insurance System Puts Your Employees' Lives And Health At Serious Risk...And How You Can Fix It, Nelson Griswold and NextGeneration Benefit Advisers
The new book, Life & Death Decisions in the C-Suite, reveals how the private healthcare system and health insurance industry have plagued employers the U.S. for decades. You do not need to continue to settle for the often-dangerous and over-priced system that is responsible for billions of wasted dollars and sub-optimal medical and health outcomes. In Life & Death Decisions in the C-Suite, NextGen Benefits Advisers and leading business consultants rip away the curtain to reveal how the current healthcare system is failing both employees and their employers who foot the bill. They will educate and empower you to leverage proven strategies and solutions to improve the quality of healthcare for your employees and their families while substantially lowering your healthcare costs.
One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of price-gouging, middlemen and a series of elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable.
The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well - a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.
Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care, Marty Makary
Dr. Marty Makary is co-developer of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's best-selling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked in many of the best hospitals in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that routinely leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limbs, and overdoses children because of sloppy handwriting.
Over the last 10 years, neither error rates nor costs have come down, despite scientific progress and efforts to curb expenses. Why? To patients, the healthcare system is a black box. Doctors and hospitals are unaccountable, and the lack of transparency leaves both bad doctors and systemic flaws unchecked. Patients need to know more of what healthcare workers know, so they can make informed choices. Accountability in healthcare would expose dangerous doctors, reward good performance, and force positive change nationally, using the power of the free market. Unaccountable is a powerful, no-nonsense, non-partisan diagnosis for healing our hospitals and reforming our broken healthcare system.
Resetting Healthcare Post-COVID-19 Pandemic, Sanjay Prasad, MD, FACS
Up to 20% of all surgeries in the United States are unnecessary.
That statistic comes from Dr. Sanjay Prasad, a practicing surgeon of nearly 30 years.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has destabilized the entire healthcare system and changed how doctors practice and how patients receive care. We can no longer afford to blindly follow the recommendations of doctors, friends, advertisements, or online ratings to make what are often the most important decisions in our lives,” he says.
So what do you do? In this easy-to-ready guide, Dr. Prasad provides the information that YOU need to take charge of your healthcare. Learn:
How to make reasonable and informed decisions about your healthcare
The differences between teaching vs. private hospitals
How to evaluate surgeons
The breakthrough technology provided by SurgiQuality.
How to control the costs of your medical procedures
Everyone at some point in their lives will need to consult a doctor or surgeon. Read this book and take charge of your healthcare now.
Has your doctor lied to you?
Eat low-fat and high-carb, including plenty of “healthy” whole grains - does that sound familiar? Perhaps, this is what you were told at your last doctor’s appointment or visit with a nutritionist, or perhaps, it is something you read online when searching for a healthy diet. And maybe, you’ve been misled. Dr. Ken Berry is here to dispel the myths and misinformation that have been perpetuated by the medical and food industries for decades.
This updated and expanded edition of Dr. Berry’s best seller Lies My Doctor Told Me exposes the truth behind all kinds of “lies” told by well-meaning but misinformed medical practitioners. Nutritional therapy is often overlooked in medical school, and the information provided to physicians is often outdated. However, the negative consequences on your health remain the same. Advice to avoid healthy fats and stay out of the sun has been proven to be detrimental to longevity and can wreak havoc on your system.
In this audiobook, Dr. Berry will enlighten you about nutrition and life choices, their role in our health, and how to begin an educated conversation with your doctor about finding the right path for you.
Never Pay the First Bill is the guerilla guide to health care the American people and employers need. Drawing on 15 years of investigating the health-care industry, reporter Marshall Allen shows how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair and shows how you can, too. He reveals the industry's pressure points and how companies and individuals have fought overbilling, price gouging, insurance denials, and more to get the care they deserve. Laying out a practical plan for protecting yourself against the system's predatory practices, Allen offers the inspiration you need and tried-and-true strategies such as:
Analyze and contest your medical bills, so you don't pay more than you should
Obtain the billing codes for a procedure in advance
Write in an appropriate treatment clause before signing financial documents
Get your way by suing in small claims court
Few politicians and CEOs have been willing to stand up to the medical industry. It is up to the American people to equip ourselves to fight back for the sake of our families - and everyone else.