It's Not Personal, It's Just Healthcare Take control of your healthcare costs without shortchanging your employees.
A free book for business owners and CFOs. It shows where your healthcare dollars actually go, who profits from the way your plan is set up, and what to do about it.
Free as a PDF or a printed copy. We pay the shipping.
The problem
Your renewal doesn't show where the money goes.
For years, business owners have been told that rising healthcare costs are just part of doing business. Higher premiums. Bigger deductibles. Fewer benefits.
You review every other expense in your business. You question price increases. You look for waste. But healthcare usually gets a pass, because the people selling it are the same people explaining it.
Two examples from the book:
Employers who audited their pharmacy benefit contracts found they were being overcharged by 300% for generic drugs.
A spinal fusion billed at $86,000. The PPO discount brought it to $36,000. A direct contract with the facility brought it to $11,500.
You can't manage costs you can't see. This book shows you where to look.
Inside the book
What nobody at your renewal meeting is telling you
- p. 14Why “you can't control your healthcare costs” is the most expensive lie in employee benefits.
- p. 23Why raising deductibles to save money can push your costs up.
- p. 26Why owners celebrate a 3% to 5% increase, and the question they should be asking instead.
- p. 32The four decisions that hand control of your plan back to you.
- p. 59The 10-to-1 price gap between one surgery center and the hospitals down the road.
- p. 65The fiduciary-duty clause that could be sitting in your pharmacy benefit contract right now, and why you should read it before your next renewal.
- p. 89How your vendors get paid, and how to line their incentives up with yours.
- p. 95The leverage you hold as the CEO or CFO who signs the check, and how to use it to demand better value.
- p. 101What Mayo Clinic found when patients went back for a second opinion.
- p. 104Why better medical care can cost less once you count the complications it prevents.
- p. 137How a self-funded plan (you pay claims directly instead of prepaying an insurer) lets you see your own claims data, and how to protect the business from one very large medical bill.
- p. 140Where unused healthcare dollars go in a self-funded plan, and why that should matter to your bottom line.
- p. 143How to read your plan's spending data to find the costly patterns your annual renewal will never show you.
The book behind the documentary
Read it on its own or after the film.
It's Not Personal, It's Just Healthcare is the companion book to the documentary film of the same name. Read it on its own or after the film. Either way, you'll finish with the questions to ask your vendors, the contract terms to check, and the places to look for waste in your own plan.
About the author
Allison De Paoli
Allison De Paoli grew up in employee benefits. Her father and stepmother built a benefits consulting firm about 40 years ago, and she learned self-funded plan design there, long before most employers had heard the term.
She founded Altiqe, based in San Antonio and working with employers across the country, to fix employee healthcare “one employer at a time.” One Altiqe client with about 800 employees hasn't raised its healthcare budget in four years, and it covers more today than it did when it started.
Allison is a Certified Health Rosetta Advisor, hosts the Raising the Bar podcast, and is co-author of the Amazon best-seller Breaking Through the Status Quo.
- 2026 BenefitsPRO Advisor of the Year
- BenefitsPRO Top Woman in Advising
- YouPowered Most Effective Consultant
- Next-Gen Benefits Top Advisor
- Certified Health Rosetta Advisor
- Employee Benefits News contributor and Vistage speaker
What employers say
Proof from companies that stopped treating healthcare as uncontrollable
“Allison has worked with us to implement creative features which both improve our cost position and the quality of our offering.”
“I know 12 ways to scale a business... and I NEVER thought of managing healthcare costs as a way to scale. Yet, it is fundamental.”
“She patiently provided in-depth guidance resulting in sustaining successive years of flat cost increases bucking the industry trend. As an HR professional with four decades of experience, I find her approach thoughtful and refreshing.”
“Altiqe has taken care of us for 11 years. Allison and her team have always helped us communicate our benefits to our employees in a way that they understand and can make use of. She is the best.”
Get the book
You shouldn't have to choose between your margins and your employees.
You want benefits that protect your people and their families. You also need to protect your margins and keep investing in the business. The way most plans are bought makes those two goals look like a trade-off.
The employers in this book stopped accepting that trade. They found out where the money goes, asked their vendors hard questions, and changed how they buy care. This book shows you how they did it.
It's Not Personal, It's Just Healthcare by Allison De Paoli. © 2026 Altiqe Consulting.