Tag: Straight Talk

One thing I’ve learned after 55 years on this planet is that we all walk around every day with biases that color our decision making. Some of these biases can be safety-related (“I really don’t want that wild snake in my home, even though I can’t tell a poisonous one from a safe one!”) or designed to support sensible decision making (“I probably won’t give Jim any more work, since he keeps getting caught stealing from the company!”) or even beneficial to society (“Sure, I could dump these excess chemicals into that river with no idea what impact they would have on the environment, but it just feels wrong!”).

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Since 2009, I’ve given more than 800 presentations in Louisiana alone on healthcare reform and cost trends. Almost all of these were to business audiences, whose benefit offerings have been drastically affected by healthcare reform.

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Health insurance companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana have a long history of trying to slow down the rapidly rising cost of healthcare. Over the years, a variety of strategies have emerged. Frankly, we’ve tried lots of stuff. When a company comes to us because their employee healthcare costs are going up too quickly, we try things like cutting out high-cost medical providers, steering people to less-expensive (but equally effective) drugs, raising out-of-pocket costs to discourage non-essential healthcare, and changing the mix between the employer contribution and the employee contribution.

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The Difference Among PPO, HMO and High-Value Networks

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Blue Cross has an active social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. We got this Facebook message from a member, and this is my response.

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By Michael Bertaut, Healthcare Economist

The debate is lively and nationwide. Why does the U.S. healthcare system cost so much? Why invest so many of our tax dollars into our healthcare system? And how do we stack up to other countries?

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