Authors: Paul Zane Pilzer and Rick Lindquist
Publisher: Wiley – 264 pages
Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar
Did you know that the United States government will be spending trillions of dollars subsidizing individual health insurance plans between now and the year 2025? Yours is not to worry what will happen to you as your government gets deeper and deeper into more debt as a result of these additional massive expenditures. Today U.S. government debt is a bit above $18 trillion (go to www.USDebtClock.org for updates). What will the debt level be in 2015, about 10 years from now? As we said that’s not for you to worry about.
Yours is to figure out how to get your share (and your family’s or company’s share) of the trillions of dollars the U.S. government will spend to pay for some part of your health insurance. The additional good news is that this book will show you how. And not just the how, but all the who, what, when, and where, as well. These are laid out in its pages and outlined, as we show you below, on its Contents pages:
The Problem and the Solution
- The Disadvantages of Employer-Provided Health Insurance
- The Advantages of Individual Health Insurance
- The Solution – Employer-Funded Individual Health Insurance
How to Make Individual Health Insurance Work For You and Your Family
- What is Individual Health Insurance?
- How Much Does Individual Health Insurance Cost?
- Premium Tax Credits: Are You Eligible for the Subsidy?
- When Can You Buy Individual Health Insurance?
- Where Can You Buy Individual Health Insurance?
- How to Choose Your Coverage – Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum
- Networks: Choosing Your Doctors and Medical Care Providers
- How to Select the Right Plan for You and Your Family
- How to reduce Your Individual Healthcare Costs
How to Switch to Defined Contribution Healthcare
- What Is Defined Contribution Healthcare?
- How to Conduct a Defined Contribution Financial Analysis
- How to Implement a Defined Contribution Solution
- How to Choose a Defined Contribution Solution Provided
- How to Communicate Defined Contribution to Employees
Appendix A – State-by-State Guide to Individual / Family Health Insurance Costs
Appendix B – Is Your Company Required to Offer Employer-Provided Health Insurance?
The authors – Paul Zane Pilzer and Rick Lindquist, who have been in the healthcare business for many years – inform us that companies and other employers are shifting some of the burden of rising healthcare costs from themselves to their employees, just as decades ago, some portion of the cost of retirement was shifted from companies to their employees. But for healthcare costs, the Affordable Care Act will lighten the weight for employees. A lot of people may be skeptical of this law, so let us see what happens.
In the meantime, for your benefit, read this book, absorb its details, and see how the enacted changes will affect your health and your pocketbook.
The authors express their confidence about the paradigm shift that is happening now in healthcare funding. That shift is from solely the employer bearing the cost to a three-way sharing model in which the employer, the employee, and the government are involved, with a different percentage of the cost for each.
They write: “over the next 10 years, 100 million Americans will move from employer-provided to individually-purchased health insurance. The purpose of The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance is to show you how to profit from this paradigm shift while helping you, your family, and your employees get better and safer health insurance at lower cost. It will help you save thousands of dollars per person each year and to protect you from the greatest threat to your financial future – our nation’s broken employer-provided health insurance system.”
Paul Zane Pilzer is The New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, a former professor at New York University, and has served as an economist in two White House administrations. He is also the founder of six companies, including the two largest U.S. suppliers of personalized employee health benefits.
Rick Lindquist is President of Zane Benefits, Inc., the U.S. leader in defined contribution employee health benefits. He is a leading contributor to leading health benefits publications, including ClarifyingHealth.com.
