Note from Lance: Last week, I went to the Employee Health Care Conference put on by The Conference Board. They covered my travel accommodations to New York so that I could bring you my honest insights of some of the higher level discussions going on among business leaders.
Craig Barrett, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, stepped up to the microphone during the opening session for the Employee Health Care conference and challenged this audience of high level benefits professionals from across the country. His message? Band together and use the collective purchasing power of the private industry to demand what the government has had a hard time legislating: price controls, efficiency, increased technology utilization and smart reforms that could propel an entire industry mired in controversy back into respectability.
After Barrett left the stage, it seemed the role of self-examining the employer’s role in health care disappeared as well. While many mentions of the bipartisan government health care summit in Washington D.C. were made throughout the day, not a single mention was made of conference sponsor Anthem Blue Cross’s up to 39% increase in premiums in the state of California. I can tell you what has the bigger impact in driving the frustration and the push for reform and it seemed to be danced around like an 800 pound gorilla.
A couple interesting ideas did make it out of the fray though.
Towers Watson (the post merger version of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt) presented the idea that better performing companies have better cost containment in health care. This was a significant figure too (around $2,000 an insured). I wasn’t exactly sure where to take this information. If you’re the head of benefits at a large underperforming company, is getting your company’s performance back to an acceptable level important or is it reducing your benefits cost so that your company can perform better (or both). It seemed unclear how overall business success could drive success in cost containment.
The CDC presented their social media program and it was interesting to hear their experiences with it. Here are a couple of interesting things that came out of that conversation.
- The response to the CDC social media accounts has been driven significantly by the H1N1 outbreak.
- Every tweet or comment posted out to social media is reviewed by a scientist for accuracy.
- The CDC is everywhere (even SecondLife) but they are starting to focus their efforts.
- CDC is making a big push into mobile. Obviously this would be huge for an organization like the CDC.
- The CDC posts all of their web and social media stats online
The first day ended with Matt Miller taking a complimentary approach to Barrett’s earlier discussion. His argument that it was virtually a moral imperative that employers reduce costs and wasteful spending on health care so that they could devote those resources to business sustaining objectives rang true to many in the audience.
Overwhelmingly (and unsurprisingly) though, much of the discussion for the rest of the time focused on wellness programs, price transparency and working with data warehouse (a program that allows companies to understand cost drivers in their health plans). Can these help control some costs? Of course. But the impact in the long run isn’t going to be terribly significant. It simply doesn’t change the underlying cost structures that really impact the long term costs associated with health care. The big conversations that happened at the onset and the end of the conference didn’t match the discussions happening throughout the day with high level decision makers.
I didn’t talk to a single person that was disappointed with the conference though so I wonder if this is the sort of leadership we’re expecting on this topic? Rousing speeches that ask companies to rise to the occasion while pushing programs at the nuts and bolts level that do little to match that wit.
If there was a hint of the sort of bold action that Barrett and Miller asked for in their speeches rumbling through the hearts of attendees at the conference, I didn’t get that sense. It seemed as though most were satisfied working within the current system, believing that change could be made within it.
As I left the conference on Friday, I have to wonder if companies take seriously the major challenges and uphill battle they face. It seems as though companies are content wait it out (along with everyone else) until absolutely forced to make tougher, unpopular decisions that could actually impact the true cost of health care.
March 1, 2010 at 6:29 am
Nice summary, Lance.
Of course, the reason you won’t hear employers at that event talking about the Anthem thing is that most all of the employers there don’t buy a dime of health insurance from anyone.
It’s the same reason all you hear are passing comments to the reform legislation, it doesn’t really affect what these employers do.
So if the core of Barrett’s speech was along the lines you mention, then that’s a good speech for a small employer audience, not one filled with large, self-insured employers and their consultants.
On these lines, many large employers have done some very important things to control health care costs, and it’s working.
Here’s some free data from a survey we did on this subject, which I think you might find interesting: http://bit.ly/4sxLML
Cheers,
Evan Falchuk
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March 4, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Yes, Lance, thanks for the summary. I’m not surprised that no revolutionary moments arose from an insurance company-sponsored function (hmm…maybe sponsoring lots of discussions is how insurance companies hope to keep criticism down). It’s sad, too, that people tend not to act proactively “until absolutely forced to make tougher, unpopular decisions.” Think Greece. Let’s hope that the U.S., governments and employers alike, can figure out a better way.