A New Blog for Employer and Union Benefits Managers and Their Advisors

klepper Brian Klepper

Reading yet another excellent post on an important topic – PPOs in this case, see below – by South Texas broker Bill Rusteberg  the other day, I was struck that there are few go-to sites dedicated to the very significant challenges faced by health benefits managers, consultants and other health benefits professionals…………………

A New Blog for Employer and Union Benefits Managers and Their Advisors

Posted by Brian Klepper

Reading yet another excellent post on an important topic – PPOs in this case, see below – by South Texas broker Bill Rusteberg  the other day, I was struck that there are few go-to sites dedicated to the very significant challenges faced by health benefits managers, consultants and other health benefits professionals.

Health care purchasers are under pressure to deliver better quality care at lower cost, but are besieged by lack of knowledge, misinformation, lack of disclosure about conflicts of interest, and intentional obfuscation by brokers, health plans, PPOs, PBMs, wellness programs and other health care interests. There is relatively little evidence-based information about what really works and why, and how you can access those opportunities without disrupting your inplace conventional health plan, especially when it is almost certainly not in that plan’s interests for you to do so.

So Care & Cost will post meaty, useful articles aimed at the health care purchaser community – employers and unions – from benefits managers and advisors who are managing risk and getting measurable results in pragmatic but often unconventional ways.

Take a look and, if you like what you see, pass Care & Cost around to your colleagues. The best way for us to gather the strength that can leverage change is for us first to come to a common understanding of the problem and its solutions.

www.careandcost.com

Care and Cost (C&C) provides a professional forum on the complex issues surrounding employer health benefits. We aspire to a high quality, conversational environment that welcomes all types of ideas from its users, so we’re setting out simple ways we want to do things that are distinctly different from many other health care sites.

Format. A few times a week we’ll run posts – articles, videos, charts, images – on topics from all of health care. We’ve recruited many thoughtful, experienced, authoritative writers who are practitioners and maintain their own blogs, but we think there is value in aggregating experts into one resource. We’ll also publish, from time to time, pieces that were published in the past, because we think they still have something important to say.

Submissions. Articles about any health care topic are welcome. Please send submissions to bklepper@gmail.com. The hosts reserve the right to revise, publish or reject any articles. Published materials may be freely reproduced with attribution to C&C.

Comments. Please comment, but also let us know who you are. No anonymity here. All it takes is providing your name and an email address. If its worth saying, then its worth saying openly. (For special circumstances, please contact us.)

Professional Behavior. While healthy disagreement, humor and even sarcasm are fine, courtesy and a respectful tone are still required.

Factual Support. Perspectives that lack substantiation are opinions. If you have a point to make, offer hyper-linked support that strengthens the argument

We hope you enjoy this site as much as we enjoy putting it together. Got a question or comment. Reach out anytime at bklepper@gmail.com, or send us a tweet at @bklepper1

Brian Klepper