Healthcare Reform is Dead. Let’s Get Back to Business.
Feb 8, 2010
Healthcare Reform is dead. When Senator Brown was elected in Massachusetts many in the insurance industry breathed a sigh of relief, some broke out champagne and celebrated. The election of Senator Brown sent a shockwave through Congress and was a huge wakeup call that average Americans are not happy with healthcare reform. It also clearly showed how Congress was completely out of touch with reality and what the American people actually wanted. As scary as it is, President Obama is now focusing on the economy and jobs, something that should have been his top priority over this past year.
Now that some reason has come back to Congress and Congress has focused back on the important topic of helping the economy recover, so now is it also the time for the US insurance industry to get back on track and get back to business. For the past year insurance companies have been involved in lobbying and fighting healthcare reform, and the insurers have been to scared to develop new and innovative products. Also, insurance companies significantly cut their marketing budgets in order to focus on not promoting an image to the US government of the money they were spending on marketing so no to be attacked by the President or Congress. Insurance agents and consultants have seen their business be put on hold as employers hold off making any changes or implementing new plans because they were waiting to see what healthcare reform brought first. Because employers also put a halt to their health insurance plans, the past year the insurance industry has pretty much been at a dead stop.
Now things have changed. Healthcare reform is dead and it will not come back in it’s original form if at all. Politicians at the end of the day care about one thing the most, being elected again. None of them are going to risk a Senator Brown situation happening to them.
So where are we now? The healthcare crisis is still here and getting worse and with healthcare reform dead, healthcare costs are continue to increase at over 10% per year. It is estimated that the average family health insurance premium by 2020 (ten years from now) will be almost $40,000 a year. WOW!!!! This leaves me and I hope you gasping for breath. This is unaffordable and unsustainable. Other insurance costs are going up. Now is the time we need innovation in healthcare and other lines of insurance. We need creativity and outside of the box thinking. As an industry we need to come together and figure out some solutions on how to fix these plans. It is also the time for insurance companies to launch new innovative insurance products. This year I believe all voluntary benefits products will continue to grow substantially, but I expect to see gap plans and limited medical plans (mini medical plans) to really grow fast. I also expect to see medical tourism to grow fast, as we saw it implemented in limited medical plans in 2009 and in 2010 also see it expanded into critical illness and cancer plans.
Now that employers have breathed a sigh of relief over healthcare reform also and can get back to business , as many of them didn’t know what would happen to corporate wellness, some were holding off offering it, or seeing how healthcare reform would change before implementing it, now is the time to re-approach them about the importance of corporate wellness. Also, let’s be honest. The idea of healthcare reform seems like a good idea, but the bill being proposed by congress did nothing to lower healthcare costs and instead was going to significantly increase health insurance costs. Who were they trying to fool? I think they realize now after Senators Brown’s election that they need to come up with a healthcare reform bill that actually lower costs and takes into account what people actually want.
Jonathan Edelheit is Editor-In-Chief of the Corporate Wellness Magazine, the only Corporate Wellness Magazine in the industry focused on Health and Wellness in the workplace. Mr. Edelheit has been involved in US healthcare for almost ten years and ran a national healthcare administrator for almost seven years that administered healthcare plans for insurance companies, employers and governments. While running the healthcare administrator Mr. Edelheit started to implement the first corporate wellness programs there through many tools such as health risk assessments, tele-medicine, e-health and many more options. Mr. Edelheit has been featured or mentioned in hundreds of media publications and in February 2008 was featured as a visionary in US healthcare by Executive Managed Healthcare Magazine. Mr. Edelheit also organizes the Corporate Wellness Conference which is the only dedicated national conference on corporate health and wellness in the country and which targets employers, health insurance agents and large consulting firms. Mr. Edelheit is also an attorney.
Jonathan Edelheit may be contacted at info@corporatewellnessmagazine.com
