I just got back from the Q4 Live event in Tampa. Q4 Intelligence is a national network of forward-thinking employee benefits professionals that share ideas to help their clients. I left with a renewed sense of optimism in our collective ability to fix the healthcare problem.
The headline speaker, who I accidentally sat next to, was David Chase, author of The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to Deliver World Class Health Care to Your Employees at Half the Cost. David’s book is a no holds barred recap of many things that are wrong with healthcare in the US with concrete examples of companies who are succeeding in bending the cost curve and providing better care for their employees. He makes a compelling argument that healthcare is already fixed, but readily available commonsense tools are underutilized.
You might notice that I used the word healthcare, not health insurance. This was intentional since the two are not the same, even though they are used interchangeably at times.
While several of these tools, direct contracting, value based primary care, and transparent pharmacy programs lend themselves better to larger employers, there definitely seems to be room to add a new level of creativity to some smaller plans as well.
I’ll cover some of these topics in future posts, but if you’d like to hear more, I enjoy talking about this topic. Give me a call at (866) 724-0008 or click the link below, enter your contact information, and I’ll get back to you.
