Yesterday I gave a speech at a conference sponsored by the Minnesota Health Action Group, their 6th annual employer leadership summit. Part of the topic was the ACA. By now most companies have a pretty good idea of the impact of ACA on their health costs.
At the start of my speech, i asked for a show of hands by those employers who think ACA would decrease their company’s health costs. Not one hand went up.
When I asked how many thought ACA would drive up their costs, every had went up.
Enough said.
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Tom Emerick
Coming soon: Cracking Health Costs, the book, to be published by John Wiley & Sons. The authors are myself and Al Lewis. Click here to pre-reserve at a deeply discounted price.
Tom Emerick is the President of Emerick Consulting, LLC, and Partner and Chief Strategy Officer with Laurus Strategies, a Chicago-based consulting firm, and cofounder of Edison Health. Prior to starting his consulting career, Tom was with Walmart Stores, where his last position was Vice President, Global Benefit Design, which involved designing and managing benefits for over 1.3 million employees in the U.S., and 300,000 plus in international. For about six years, Tom also headed up Walmart’s Six Sigma and process improvement initiatives. Prior to Walmart, Tom had positions with Burger King Corporation, British Petroleum, and American Fidelity Assurance Company. In 2009, Tom was named by Healthspottr as one of the top 100 innovators in healthcare the US for his work on medical ethics. In December 2012, Tom was listed in Forbes.com as one of 13 unsung heroes changing healthcare forever.
There are five reasons that the group could be right. First, the massive requirements to become an ACO will drive up hospital expenses. Second, hospital systems are buyin physician practices and those practices need to generate revenue to show a return. Third, the ACOs I’ve listened to are woefully missing the market on where the cost-reduction levers are (in unnecessry care) and instead are blaming the patients for not being “engaged,” when my own experience has been that the things my physician wanted me to “engage” in were fabulously stupid ideas.
Fourth, they are gaining market power and therefore will negotiate a better deal for themselves, just like Partners Healthcare here in Boston did on a massive scale.
Finally, the likely amount “at risk” for proceduralists if their group does fewer procedures will be overwhelmed by their fee for doing those procedures.
Why do they think their costs will go up. Specifics??