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Alice Rhodes on How Self-Funding Lowers Health Plan Costs With More Control
Description
Your health insurance renewal arrives, and the number is bigger again, and somehow nobody can tell you exactly why. We dig into a different way to fund benefits that more growing companies are using to regain control: self-funded health insurance. I’m joined by Alice Rhodes, VP of Benefits at AUI, to translate the jargon into plain English and explain how self-funding actually works when you’re the employer paying claims, not a carrier collecting one locked-in premium.
Alice Rhodes talks through the real reasons business owners start exploring self-funded plans: relentless renewal increases, zero transparency, and the feeling that you’re stuck with a one-size-fits-all group health plan. Alice explains how self-funding can unlock claims visibility, benefit customization, and better long-term planning, plus how that data can drive smarter decisions around preventive care, ER misuse, specialty medications, and employee education. If you’ve ever wondered why your plan costs what it costs, this is the framework that finally makes the numbers make sense.
Risk is the big fear, so we go deep on stop-loss insurance and the guardrails that keep exposure limited: specific stop-loss for high-cost individuals and aggregate stop-loss for total plan protection. We also cover level-funded health plans as a hybrid option that keeps predictable monthly payments while still offering potential surplus refunds or renewal credits if claims run better than expected. If you’re comparing fully insured vs self-funded vs level funded, you’ll leave with clear next steps and the exact information to pull together for quotes.
If benefits costs feel heavy and unpredictable, share this with a fellow business owner, subscribe for more practical leadership conversations, and leave a review. What’s the most confusing part of your health insurance renewal right now?
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