Understanding healthcare’s flaws and finding solutions with Michael Menerey

The Benefits Playbook is a podcast covering all things employee healthcare, brought to you by Collective Health. Each episode features an in-depth conversation between Sasha Yamaguchi, Commercial Leader at Collective Health, and an expert in the health benefits industry.

Michael Menerey, Senior Vice President and Benefits Consultant with Alliant Insurance Services, joins us for the latest episode of The Benefits Playbook. With over 20 years of experience, Michael is a recognized leader in the employee benefits industry, focusing on strategies that challenge traditional healthcare models and drive better value for employers and employees alike.

Since 2017, Michael’s podcast, Reconstructing Healthcare, has explored key issues in the U.S. healthcare system—particularly what drives healthcare costs higher and how traditional insurance products fall short of expectations. Michael interviews companies that are providing innovative services and solutions designed to not only disrupt the health insurance marketplace, but also deliver better value for employers and their employees. 

In his conversation with our host, Sasha Yamaguchi, Michael discusses some of the most broken aspects of the traditional healthcare system, such as the lack of price transparency and quality metrics for services. He also explains how traditional, fully insured health plans offer limited flexibility when it comes to controlling costs. He argues that in contrast, self-funded plans provide employers with more tools to manage both costs and care quality.

“When you’re fully insured, there’s just not a lot of levers that can be pulled from a cost containment standpoint. Once you move into that self-funded world, there is just a whole universe of different levers and tools at your disposal that can not only control cost, but can also improve the quality of care for employees and improve the member experience, relative to what it is in a traditional insurance model or even the traditional healthcare system.”

– Michael Menerey

Highlights from this episode include:

• Michael’s top 3 point solutions to consider
• How to tailor benefit communications to fit diverse workforce demographics
• The benefits of self-funded health plans

Listen to the full episode above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. 

Read the episode transcript here.