Healthcare Choices for Consumers

Greg Scandlen talks about putting more power into the hands of the healthcare consumer.

Well, that is the challenge. And what’s going on is we’re putting the money in the hands of the patient, with the money in the hands of the consumer and letting them control how to spend it. Once they have that responsibility, then they start really paying attention. They will start to demanding information services but the key is to give them control over the money. It's all their money to begin with. Every penny that’s on that health care comes from the consumer in the form of taxes, insurance premiums, lost wages on the job. Every penny is theirs. The problem is they haven’t been allowed to control how that money is used and they have been trusting third party payers, government employers to make the decision for them. And I think they’re beginning to realize that those people have not been making good decisions so they are beginning to take control again, at their own front. People need the help of an agent. Anytime you're dealing with a complex system, the criminal justice system, the tax code, you typically hire an expert to help you navigate that and they will do that in health care also. We’re not suggesting that people design their own treatment plans, that they become individualized experts in everything about health care but that they choose an agent that will help them do that. Most likely, that will be a physician but not necessarily. It may be a nurse, maybe a broker you know and there may be new professions coming along to help people navigate that but we don’t envision that they’ll be out on their own making all their own decisions. I think the changed pre-substantially for most employers. Many employers like doing this, they’re pretty good at it and they’ll continue to do it as they have. I'm thinking about the General Electric and large companies like that. Small and midsized companies don’t have expertise here. You know, health care is not their business and they have an interest in seeing to it that their workers are well covered because that reduces time offers, sick leave, and increases productivity. I mean, they do have an interest there but I think it's mostly a financial interest. So, I think the employers will continue to contribute towards the cost of coverage without actually second guessing the decisions that their employees would be making. But it's interesting because every time they come to one of these conferences there are things that are developed you know. And it's a way of taking the pull-outs of this movement, you know at different points sometime.