Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 14
I gave the Fourteenth Annual Ernest Haddad lecture at Massachusetts General Hospital's Medical Grand Rounds yesterday; my topic was “Employer Sponsored Health Insurance and Economic Inequality.”
Ernest Haddad was the longtime general counsel of Mass General, and the founding general counsel of Partners Health Care. He had also served earlier as general counsel of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and after his retirement from Partners served as a dean at BU School of Law for a dozen years. He has had a lifelong commitment to social justice ; He pushed for meaningful community benefit in his professional leadership roles, and in his private life he promoting programs to send underprivileged youth to excellent suburban public schools. He opened his home to foster children, and he was always an educator – whether teaching at Boston University or establishing fellowships at Partners. Ern continues in his retirement to serve as a mentor to many generations of lawyers and others – and he is an inspiration to us all.
Employer sponsored health insurance at its outset helped decrease economic disparities. Health insurance gave line workers the same kind of access to hospital care as company executives, and allowed the “risk” of serious illness to be shared over a broad portion of the population. As health care costs have increased, employers have decreased the “actuarial value” of health plans – which means that those who use health care services pay a larger portion of the costs at the point of service. This has been far worse for those with modest incomes who can ill-afford unbudgeted costs. I review efforts that many employers are making to help ease the burden of health care costs for low wage workers, including changes in plan design, employer subsidization, and health care delivery.
I’ve posted a PDF of my slides here. I’m grateful to the Mongan Institute for the opportunity to give this talk, and to Steve Nyce and many other colleagues at Willis Towers Watson who helped me glean insights from our research. As always, this blog and the lecture represent my point of view and not the point of view of Willis Towers Watson.
