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What the Insurance Industry Can Do to Fix Health Care

"[We] need someone to cut through the complexity of the current system, demand true value from providers, and create better options for consumers. Insurers increasingly look like the folks who can do the job and reinvent their business at the same time.... Here are some specific ideas ... Act as true partners to value-based providers.... Offer options for low-cost, convenient care.... Cover new wellness- and prevention-oriented treatments.... Explode the PPO model.... Sell convenience and personalized service.... Power healthy behavior change.... Serve as the bridge between new tools and consumers."

The Hobby Lobby Decision Could Affect a Majority of U.S. Employees

"[W]hile the ruling may seem limited in that it only speaks to closely held firms, it in fact applies to more than 90% of U.S. companies, and even to a narrow majority of workers.... [S]ome businesses ... plan to stop providing contraceptives as a result of the ruling. Such a trend could help reverse the steady increase in contraceptive coverage, which has risen from 68% to 84% since the passage of the ACA."

Why Retail Clinics Failed to Transform Health Care

"Retail clinics have demonstrated that they are a sustainable business model and clearly fit a patient need: Today, there are more than 1,600 clinics across the country, which have had a total of 20 million patient visits. Nonetheless, their performance has been disappointing: Their growth has been less than expected, they have not expanded care to underserved markets (namely, the poor), and their impact on health care spending -- helping to lower it -- remains unclear."

Creating a Health-Promoting Work Environment

"Lifestyle-related (and therefore preventable) illnesses make up approximately 80 percent of the burden of health care costs for companies and 90 percent of all health care costs, according to one study. Health and wellness incentives have long been considered a luxury only large corporations can afford, not a strategic imperative for all businesses to keep ever-increasing health care costs at bay, say the authors of a study published in the Harvard Business Review. That view is rapidly changing."

Preventing the Next Big Cyberattack on U.S. Health Care

"The cyberattack on Change Healthcare that devastated the U.S. health care sector made painfully clear that much more needs to be done to address vulnerabilities that exist throughout the ecosystem. This article offers five actions that can go a long way to improving cybersecurity throughout the sector and make it much more resilient."

Amazon's Foray Into Primary Care Won't Be Easy

"America's health care system seems, paradoxically, both endlessly innovative and profoundly dysfunctional.... Could Amazon's $3.9 billion acquisition be the breakthrough that will change all this?  ... We should never underestimate Amazon. But we also shouldn't underestimate the challenges it faces in working its usual magic in America's huge, troubled, tangled health care sector."

Does Your Health Plan Leave Your Workers Functionally Uninsured?

"A significant and worrying number of workers are forced to make hard choices and sacrifices with regard to their health care. Concerns over health care costs are driving employees' need for greater access to mental and behavioral health services.... [E]mployees are willing to give up benefit plan features that were once considered untouchable if they can expect significantly lower costs in return.... Fortunately, each point is actionable."

U.S. Health Care Is in Flux -- Here's What Employers Should Do

"[Employers] should not seek a short-term fix by raising copayments, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs for next year. While this strategy may initially reduce spending on health care, studies show that it will disincentivize employees to seek preventative treatment.... Here are three strategies that can help employers weather the inevitable ups and downs of 2021 and beyond and improve employee health: [1] Manage health care benefits like all other purchases.... [2] Leverage technology.... [3] Partner with hospitals and physicians."

How Employers Are Fixing Health Care

"Working closely with providers such as Geisinger, the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Virginia Mason ... [some employers] are crafting bundled payment arrangements that cover the cost of an employee's care for certain episodes from start to finish -- all the procedures, devices, tests, drugs, and services needed for, say, a knee replacement or a back surgery. They're also, in most instances, picking up the tab for any necessary travel, lodging, and meals for the employee and a caregiver, thus democratizing destination care programs that have historically been reserved as an executive perk."

To Control Health Care Costs, Employers Should Form Purchasing Alliances

"To achieve the kind of gains in controlling health care costs that employers want, they will ... need to band together in local purchasing alliances, come to agreement on common features of health insurance products, and then, working with local insurers, wrangle price and delivery concessions from local providers."