I wish you could have been there.
The May meeting of the CFO Roundtable was on Health Insurance Reform, and it turned into a chat on how to really make significant changes in employee health behavior. We had a panel with two excellent attorneys and the President of Anthem Blue Cross, and a room with about 30 CFOs.
CFOs and Attorneys on the topic of Health
It was a solid conversation with good Q&A.
Main points –
The health insurance reform bill is not health care reform. It is poorly written. Most of the expert advisors out there do not want to get too far out in front, or they will end up doing a bunch of throwaway work.
On grandfathering your existing plan, there is a dilemma. You can use it to get out of more things, but they have less value. Upon inspection, it is not as big a deal as first thought.
As currently written, for many smaller employers it will be cheaper to abandon health plans using the current numbers. Two things to realize – first, the regulators will probably be raising the penalties for this approach. Second, from a recruiting and retention point of view, not having benefits will harm your ability to find and retain a good workforce.
How to fix health care? We must have payment reform, and get away from a transactional mentality. One big impact could be in the practice of moving from the current method of charging fees for individual services to a “bundling” approach.
The seeds have been planted, but will take years. We want to pay for value, pay for quality. On the plus side, we have the Indiana Health Information Exchange, which could be helping us pay for value, pay for quality.
Now for the ironic part. We were agreeing that good wellness plans had a positive impact, that employee behaviors were at the core of the issue, and that we all wanted employees that exercised more and ate a healthy diet.
What did the CFOs have for breakfast?
Mmmmmm. Donuts.
Karl Ahlrichs' Uncommon Experience 
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