Framework for the Future of Health Plans

Five Steps for Health Plans to Master for Better and Cheaper Healthcare: A Free Report

There is a business model in keeping people healthy. As long as 20 years ago I was writing that health insurers had the potential to be the most revolutionary force for good in healthcare. Only in 2011 are all the factors aligning to help these hopes become realities.

We want health care to be abundant, effective, easy, and cheap; for too many of us too much of the time it is scarce, ineffective, maddeningly difficult, and far too expensive. It has become an unspeakable burden to both individuals and employers, a cost beyond their control, an ever-growing tax, a sap on productivity—and starting in 2014, carrying that burden will no longer be optional. Individuals will have to have insurance, employers will have to carry it or be fined. Health plans are in the business of helping them solve that problem.

Why does healthcare cost so much, and we still do not get what we want and need? Study healthcare long enough, apply the tools of systems thinking, and huge problem areas emerge from the morass of data—problems which also point the way to a solution. If we dealt with these problems, we would save hundreds of billions per year—and deliver better healthcare for everyone. Even better, the things we need to do to deal with these problem areas will create a “virtuous spiral” that will continually make healthcare better and cheaper, much as consumer electronics have gotten more powerful and cheaper year after year for thirty years.

This revolution in health care is emergent, it’s happening now. It’s not simple, it’s complex. It’s hard to explain, it’s sometimes hard even to notice, even if you’re doing a piece of it. It’s not political. It’s not about rationing. It’s not about abating symptoms, it’s about healing the system, because the dysfunction in health care is deeply systemic.

I’ll tell you what I feel about the future of healthcare: If somebody doesn’t pull a rabbit out of a hat some time real soon now, we are in serious trouble.

The good news? There is a hat, and it has a rabbit in it. Handfuls of rabbits.

Here at Imagine What If, we are seeing things that are so encouraging that it warranted a special report. A new shape for healthcare is emerging in a wide variety of new forms and models. What they have in common is that they have the capacity to actually drive healthcare to become not only better, but far less expensive than it is today. Yes, cheaper: Not just “bending the cost curve” to a lower level of medical inflation, but driving the cost downward.

Health plans, as major customers and aggregators of healthcare, play a key role in this revolution. Finally, now, they are finding ways to use their market strength to force changes in healthcare.

The free report we have prepared lays out the background, the underlying trends that are shifting healthcare’s direction at light speed. Then it details the five strategies that health plans can use, which together will lower their customers’ healthcare costs while helping them be healthier: Healthcare that is both better and cheaper. That’s the goal, and it is within reach.

Fill out this form and we will direct you to the Framework for the Future: A Strategic Survival Kit for Health Plans.