American Benefits Podcast American Benefits Council

Shawn Gremminger recently assumed the role of president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Associations -- a Council member and frequent ally on health care policy. In this episode, we discuss the National Alliance's unique structure and composition, its policy priorities and the importance of getting value for every health care dollar.

Fred Thiele, vice president, global benefits and mobility for Microsoft, will serve as chair of the American Benefits Council's Board of Directors for the 2023-2024 term. In this episode, he speaks with host Jason Hammersla about his company's unique approach to benefits, outlines his priorities for the next year and drops a few tales of questionable reimbursement requests.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a priority for many of the American Benefits Council’s member companies, who have in turn directed us to engage with these issues as they relate to employee benefits. 
Over the previous 12 months, the Council has established a task force to address social determinants of health and joined with a number of other esteemed organizations to release the research report, Collection of Race and Ethnicity Data for Use by Health Plans to Advance Health Equity.
The project was a collaboration with Urban Institute and Deloitte’s Health Equity Institute, as funded by Elevance Health. In this podcast episode, Jennifer Haley, senior research associate in the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center, talks to host Jason Hammersla about the recent collaborative study examining the collection and sharing of race and ethnicity data and how that data might be used by health plans to advance health equity.

If the American Benefits Council is to be a leader in the employee benefits world, we must have strong internal leadership. The Council’s policy agenda is carefully considered and set by our Policy Board of Directors, made up of knowledgeable and dedicated human resource and benefits professionals at each of our most engaged member companies.
Holding the gavel at the head of that table is this episode's special guest. Speaking to host Jason Hammersla is Tracy Watts, senior partner in Mercer’s Washington D.C. office and the company’s National Leader for U.S. Health Care Reform. As one of the nation’s foremost experts on the intersection of health policy and business strategy, Tracy speaks with Jason about the latest in employer innovation, the importance of the Council's advocacy and her vision for the organization's future.

For many multinational companies, figuring out how to scale employee benefits for a global population is a critical element of their economic competitiveness. But if providing comprehensive employee benefit programs in the United States is like playing advanced chess, doing so on a global basis is like playing advanced chess on a moving speedboat.
The American Benefits Council's policy team is not only engaged with the whole wide world at the “big-picture” level, it is also focused on practical matters for global employee benefit plan sponsors like governance, employee mobility, mergers and acquisitions and more.
Guiding members and staff across those choppy waters is Lynn Dudley, our senior vice president, global retirement and compensation policy, and Mike Mullins, chair of the Council's Global Benefits Committee. In this episode, host Jason Hammersla talks to Lynn and Mike about how global benefits differ from domestic programs and what major challenges global companies face today.

Even as policymakers discuss and debate the so-called "retirement savings gap," employers and others are starting to take part in a newly-minted coverage expansion tool: the SECURE Act of 2019 birthed the inception of the Pooled Employer Plan (PEP), which allows separate companies employers to team up and share plan administration for their collective employees. On this episode of the American Benefits Podcast, host Jason Hammersla is joined by Rick Jones, senior partner in Aon’s National Retirement Practices group. Together they discuss the state of employer plan sponsorship, barriers to plan formation and how PEPs might improve the environment for plan sponsors.