Hospitals Can Win By Losing

Hospitals Can Bypass New Price Transparency Rules For A Price

Why are hospitals making all the fuss about the new price transparency rules announced by HHS?  Instead they would be wise to remain silent and fund $300 per day ($109,500 per year) into their “Government Punishment Fund” as an additional cost of doing business.

This is a perfect example of Winning By Losing…………..

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Cost Shifting Is Silly

Status quo strategies used to reduce health care spend by employers includes cost shifting to plan members. Higher deductibles and higher out-of-pocket costs reduces insurance premium costs but not health care costs.

Back in the day a health insurance deductible equaled one week’s worth of pay. A $100 deductible was standard back in 1975.

Now it’s not uncommon to see annual deductibles of $4000 and more, much more.

It’s evident cost shifting has not tamed the healthcare beast.

And it’s clearly evident size doesn’t matter. A +400,000 life self-funded health plan in Texas has been practicing cost shifting for years. 64% of plan members are on a $2,750 front end deductible with no first dollar coverage (except for preventive care) before benefits are paid.

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Cash Pay Health Plans Save 50% or More

“Paying cash to see the doctor out of network cost less than half of seeing the same doctor in-network with insurance.”

Plan sponsors should adopt cash pay strategies as many of our clients have done with good success. Whereas a typical PPO plan will pay (with your money) as much as 225% – 400% of Medicare, our cash pay program pays ( with your money) Medicare rates or below on average.

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20 Year Old Starts Hospital Charity – Now The Rest of The Story

Hello Americans. I’m Paul Harvey. You know what the news is —– in a minute you’re going to hear the rest of the story……………………..

At 20 years old Eric started a hospital charity to benefit children in need of health care. It was a noble endeavor. In less than 10 years, he raised more than $20 million for terminally ill children at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital in New York. His charity maintained just over a 9 percent cumulative expense ratio, one of the lowest expense ratios of any charity in the nation, and funded the construction of one of the most cutting edge intensive care units and surgery centers dedicated to children.

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BCBS Swims In Cash

Your BCBS renewal could be the beneficiary of a reserve buy-down in 2020 which means lower than normal rate increases. New business rates should be below market too. That’s because “A $1.7 billion tax refund under the Trump administration’s tax cuts drove a 226 percent rise in net income to $4.1 billion, from $1.3 billion the year earlier.” 

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