By Evan Falchuk
What’s Best Doctors all about?
The Mind Your Own Business radio show finds out. Tune in to my recent interview where I’m talking about misdiagnosis, rising health care costs, and how important it is to bring the minds of the top 5% of medical experts to your employees and their families.
Listen to the recording here.
By Evan Falchuk
My post last week, The Worst Health Care System in the World Is…. was picked up today in the terrific The Health Care Blog.
Go read it there — and check out the lively comments, in which my post is called “superficial drivel” by one commenter.
True? You decide!
By Evan Falchuk
Here’s my weekly look at things I’ve read that maybe you haven’t.
1. Health Insurance, Hospital Industries: Don’t Repeal Reform Law. Hospitals and health insurers aren’t keen on seeing the health care reform law changed very much. It’s probably got something to do with the fact that hospitals are going to get lots of new money from millions of newly insured Americans. And that health insurers like the idea that they will end up like utility companies- with secure market shares and predictable profits. Large employers – least affected by the law – also seem to want to avoid opening this can of worms.
2. Will Government Web Site Make it Easier to Pick Doctors? I hope so. But, if it’s anything like the way healthcare.gov says it helps you pick hospitals, I am skeptical. At some point, consumers will figure out the serious limitations of these tools and get upset about how they are being handled. Ask the TSA what that’s like.
3. Medical Tourism: Not What You Think It Is. I don’t think there is much of a market for Americans to travel abroad for care, no matter how much cheaper it is. But there is a market for Americans to travel to other cities in the US for higher-quality, or lower cost care. I call it “domestic medical tourism,” and it is one of the emerging trends in U.S. benefits design.
4. Higher Deductible? You Probably Think Reform is Bad. Well, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but a study showed that employees who were in higher deductible plans were more likely to be worried about the impact of health care reform. Does this mean that once you’re in a higher deductible plan you tend to like it better?
5. Never Hesitate to Get a Second Medical Opinion. File this one under “damn straight.”
6. Google’s Unintentional Weight Loss Program. A friend of mine recently wondered if the people in news stock footage of obese people ever recognize themselves. Well, when a very overweight man in the UK recognized himself on Google Street View, he was shocked by how he looked and decided to do something about it. He lost 100 pounds.
By Evan Falchuk
“We want our employees to spend their time on real issues,” said Charlie Salter, VP of Benefits at ConAgra. He means it. Charlie and ConAgra have built their health care benefits around some simple concepts that are yielding impressive results.
How impressive?
Close to flat health care cost trend since 2007.
Charlie’s work is part of a growing trend among America’s most innovative companies: designing health care benefits in ways that have a real impact on quality and cost. It’s why I asked Charlie to share the podium with me in Boca Raton this morning. ConAgra is showing it’s possible to control health care costs by helping people do the right thing.
By Evan Falchuk
I’m speaking this morning at the 23rd Annual Benefits Forum and Expo. This is one of the premier events in the health care benefits industry, and it’s a thrill for me to be the opening speaker on the “Health Care” track.
I’m presenting along with Charlie Salter, the VP of Benefits of ConAgra, one of our customers at Best Doctors. The talk Charlie and I will give is called “Real Results: When Individuals are in Control of their Health Care.”
As regular readers know, good things happen when people are in control of their care. They have a chance to make sure they’re not one of the 20% of people that end up with an incorrect diagnosis, or the more than 60% of people that end up with the wrong treatment. It’s the single most powerful thing you can do to make sure your health care experience is as good as it can possibly be.
It’s something that more and more highly innovative companies like ConAgra are making the core of their health care benefits programs. Not only does it improve the quality of care for their employees, it also saves the company significant amounts of money – real dollars – by avoiding misguided care.
Visit back later, I’ll share some observations after the talk.
By Evan Falchuk
I was interviewed today by Employee Benefit Adviser, one of the leading publications in the employee benefits market. I spoke with EBA’s Editor in Chief, John Ortman about trends in the health care market, problems with the quality of health care around the world, and, of course, Best Doctors.
The podcast is here.
By Evan Falchuk
Fortune magazine has made some news recently about the impact of health care reform on large employers:
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
The only trouble? There’s no way these employers are seriously thinking about doing this.
By Evan Falchuk
I gave a speech yesterday at the Midwest Business Group on Health’s 30th Annual Conference. The MBGH is one of the country’s leading organizations on health care, and its members include the leading innovators and thought leaders on health care in America. It was a privilege to present to them.
I spoke about why health care just isn’t a consumer business, in spite of all of the efforts to turn people into health care “consumers.”
Read the text of my remarks below the fold, it was a very interesting day.
By Evan Falchuk
Giving people “incentives” to spend their money wisely is a growing part of the solution to rising health care costs. Give people financial responsibility for their health care decisions, the thinking goes, and they’ll make cost-effective choices.
It’s usually done by having people pay part of the cost of their employer-provided health coverage, and through things like higher deductibles and co-pays. Today, on average, people in the private sector pay 20% or more of the cost of their coverage. The trend is for this number to go up.
But it’s not true everywhere.
If you look in the public sector you see a different, more troubling story. It’s a lesson in what can happen when incentives go wrong in health care. (more…)
By Evan Falchuk
Over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru theorizes that people want more control over how they spend their health care dollars:
[Ezra] Klein’s argument is that if employees understood that the employer’s alleged share of their health-care costs are really part of their wages — and if they saw it on their paychecks — they would be more supportive of cost control. I agree with that. But I assume he means (based on his examples in this op-ed) that they would be more supportive of cost controls imposed by HMOs or Congress. I think they would be more inclined to favor turning over control of health insurance from their employers to themselves, and making the cost-quality trade-offs for themselves with their own money. Under the status quo, those trade-offs are made by other people and the fact that it’s the employees’ money is obscured.
It sounds nice in theory. But in practice it seems to be exactly wrong.
