Typically, an island spurs a feeling of happiness. Visions of sunshine, sandy beaches, blue oceans, and your beverage of choice make it easy to imagine spending a great deal of time there. Introducing healthcare island….
Then there is the island we will refer to as the healthcare island. In our quest to continue to help employers fight the broken healthcare purchasing model, we are going to discuss healthcare island and why it’s perhaps the only island you ever wanted to leave.
We refer to it as healthcare island because the healthcare industry generally does not operate under the same set of free market enterprise principles that all other industries and sectors operate by. healthcare Island is heavily populated by Insurance Carriers, Pharmaceutical Companies, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, Third Party Administrators, and commissioned Brokers.
The intent of this article is not to disparage those parties, it is our intent however to disparage the model in which employers are forced to purchase healthcare for their employees. We believe the model is fatally flawed and unsustainable.
Healthcare Island plays by a different and fundamentally broken set of rules.
The players we mentioned earlier who reside on the island control the manufacturing of the products, the price of the products, the timeline in which the products can be purchased and perhaps most importantly, all of the underlying data that supports the price of the product as well as how to use the product most efficiently.
The products are also incredibly difficult to understand, almost intentionally confusing.
To make this island even more remote, they increase the cost of their products every single year.
They have conditioned their customers to be happy if the cost only goes up 10% and often times to get to a 10% increase, you have to strip the product down and take away important features. Sometimes, the cost radically increases, as much as 25-75%, establishing a new and often astronomically high baseline for future increases.
You are stuck on what we refer to as the “Insanity Treadmill” and they make you repeat this process every single year.
So, I ask that you stop and think for a moment, is there any other product or service in the world that you would purchase under the same set of circumstances?
Do you believe the players who reside on healthcare island, with all the conflicts of interest that exist, are generally concerned with improving your outcomes?
Are they concerned with you controlling or reducing your cost? Clearly, these are rhetorical questions.
Enough with the negativity, here’s the good news, Andus has a lifeboat that can get you off of healthcare Island and arm you with a time-tested approach to both purchasing and managing your healthcare plan.
Our approach, developed over many years, will give you far greater control over the price and allow you to customize your offerings.
You will have valuable data to guide your decision-making based upon what your members need, versus a carrier telling you what they need but providing you with no supporting information.
Furthermore, there may be substantial savings for you to visit the island of your choice! Call us today for more information.
