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Overheard: ‘You have an ugly baby’

To be fair, no one really said that – but I just couldn’t resist. It’s not every day you get to write a headline like that. Anyway, “You Have an Ugly Baby” actually is a book by Daniel Rickard that takes a new look at the health care quandary by focusing on prevention and wellness.

With health care reform in the news, “You Have an Ugly Baby” seeks to challenge old ideas on this burgeoning dilemma. Rickard, a senior vice president for an insurance broker in Jackson, Mich., concentrates on how to better manage the cost rather than who is going to pay. The book is told from the perspective of Debbie, an HR manager who finds herself in a position many of you are all too familiar with: She must either reduce health care costs in her company or balance the cost increase with the layoff of workers.

As Debbie investigates medical quality issues and fights to discover why health care costs keep rising, she begins to realize that to manage health care, employee behavior must be connected to consequences. Real change, she comes to realize, must be implemented through incentives and penalties to create a culture of health and wellness. Prevention of illness, she decides, is a cornerstone to managing cost.

Rickard says he’s taken many of the novel's events from his clients' own experiences, and that such experiences have shown him that employers can change their destiny when it comes to skyrocketing health care costs.

And like I’ve said before, I’m no PR exec, but you can buy the book on Amazon and Booksurge.com.

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