qotd: Health navigators for everyone

Kaiser Health News
August 13, 2014
More Employers Limit Health Plan Networks But Seek To Preserve Quality,
Says Adviser
By Mary Agnes Carey

Dr. Robert Galvin is chief executive officer of Equity Healthcare (a
wholly owned subsidiary of Blackstone, a global investment and advisory
firm), where he works with executives of nearly 50 companies that
purchase health coverage for 300,000 people. Galvin says the 2010
Affordable Care Act has made employers more engaged in health benefits
while encouraging their workers to be savvier health care consumers.

"I think what the ACA has done more than anything is it has made every
employer examine their strategy and in every case it's bringing the CFO
and the CEO" into decisions about the company's health care, which often
didn't use to happen, he said.

Q: We're hearing a lot these days about narrow networks. While they
existed before the ACA, how are employers using tools like narrow
networks or high-deductible plans to control costs?

A: Those employers who are going to stay in the game – which is the
majority of them – in many cases have to [improve] what they're
covering. They now have to use the managed care tools that they all
abandoned 15 years ago.

So the answer is narrow networks – we now call them "performance
networks" – they are definitely increasing in popularity. And I think
what we're trying to do differently this time is to make them
performance [based] and not just narrow.

The second change from the '90s is always offering options outside of
the narrow network. So rather than "Here's your narrow network, that's
it," it's, "Here's your performance network that is going to be less
expensive for you. If you want to, [you have the option] of paying
considerably more money, and getting to another network, or another
physician."

I think what we learned in the '90s was that Americans want choice, even
if it's the wrong choice.

On the high deductible side, there's absolutely a move in that
direction. The way we think about it, we're trying to make more
informed consumers.

This is a more intelligent way of getting people more involved in their
health decisions. I think the thing to watch, honestly, is the full
replacement high deductible. [There's] no [preferred provider option],
no point-of-service. All you have is a high deductible. There's still
in and out of network but what it means as an employee is you can't
choose between a PPO where you pay $20 to see your doctor or a high
deductible where you'll have to pay $120. The only option you have is
the high deductible. About 20 percent of the commercial companies have
that. The key thing to watch is how many companies basically only offer
high deductibles. It's about 20 percent now but I think that's going to
grow double-digits every year.

Q: Does the ACA need the employer mandate to work?

A: My bottom line feeling about that is no.

I think people in government have absolutely no idea what kind of work
and complexity [employers face] for what seems like a simple regulation.
In terms of who's eligible, who's tracking hours, doing the look back,
what you have for HR systems to manage the reporting requirements,
actually administering that is a nightmare.

Q: How do employers help their employees understand more about the
health care they're purchasing?

A: The first thing is they need to make employees price sensitive.
Time has shown that all the education you can give someone really only
impacts a small percent of employees who are interested anyway.

With more price sensitivity is an obligation, if you want the market to
work, for information. And information that works for individuals. More
companies are giving [employees] access to health navigators, or health
coaches. So that if you look at information on the computer or you
don't have broadband or you don't know what it means, you have someone
to call who can walk you through it.

It's a real need in the market to be able to call a navigator or a
coach, not through an insurance company, but a free-standing company and
have that person help employees figure things out.

Along with price sensitivity has to come the support.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/August/13/More-Employers-Limit-Health-Plan-Networks-But-Seek-To-Preserve-Quality.aspx

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Equity Healthcare (a subsidiary of Blackstone)

Equity Healthcare works with private equity firms and their portfolio
companies to bring innovative solutions to manage health care costs.

http://www.equityhealthcare.com/default.aspx

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Blackstone

At Blackstone, we apply our strengths as a leading global investment and
advisory firm to deliver solutions, unlock value and propel growth.

Above all, we have made it our No. 1 priority to serve the needs of our
investors and clients.

http://www.blackstone.com/the-firm/overview/why-blackstone

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Comment by Don McCanne

Follow the logic. To receive greater value in health care, we need to
put the patients in charge of purchasing decisions by exposing them to
price sensitivity - requiring out-of-pocket payment of high deductibles.
We also have to use the managed care tools of 15 years ago - provider
networks - but which are now narrower, so we are renaming them
"performance networks." But this does increase the complexity of a
system already infamous for its administrative excesses. So what can we
do to improve the patient's ability to negotiate this complex maze of
market-oriented health care?

Simple. Let's provide each patient with a "health navigator" or "health
coach." They can help patients figure out how this thing works. Of
course, they can't give medical advice, but they can provide additional
administrative services to assist the patient. Equity Healthcare
promotes free-standing companies that provide health navigator services
- more administrative services, but no health care services, but at
least these entities can help fulfill the mission of serving the needs
of Blackstone's investors.

We gain more administrative services and greater investor opportunity at
a cost of reducing patient choices in health care while exposing them to
potential financial hardship. Is that how markets are supposed to work?
Making things worse for patients while imposing on them the costs of yet
more superfluous administrative services? Adam Smith would be perplexed.
Producers gain by serving consumers, yet today producers are abusing
consumers to achieve their gains. Isn't it time to replace the invisible
hand of the market with the opaque hand of government by establishing
our own single payer national health program?