Episode #153: A Blueprint for Better Employee Health Plans – with Dave Chase, co-founder and CEO of Health Rosetta

Friends, This is a super interesting and fast paced dialogue about a topic that is poorly understood by most, including healthcare executives and policy experts. The topic is employee health plans. Our guest today, Dave Chase is a remarkable healthcare entrepreneur with decades of experience who has been one of the most brilliant thinkers and activists in reforming employee healthcare benefits. He and his colleagues at Health Rosetta have really unearthed the core underlying problems and are doing something about them. They do, in fact, have a blueprint that is replicable, scalable and sustainable; and they have numerous examples of success. Given that nearly 50 percent of healthcare is paid by employers, this issue has broad impact and significant implications for American healthcare and for the financial welfare of working Americans and their families.  In this interview, we’ll discover: To what extent employee health plans have been eroding the wages and retirement funds of working Americans for the past 3 decades.<br /> The implications of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which requires employers to be fiduciary stewards of their employees’ health plans.<br /> The importance of understanding the legal documents of health plans as the untapped lever that can enable us to fix American healthcare.<br /> The undisclosed revenue streams and incentives that are contributing to the outsized and unsustainable rising costs of employee health plans.<br /> The “open sourcing” in hospitals, and in healthcare in general, that is needed to improve quality, safety and costs. Examples of companies that have successfully redesigned their health benefits resulting in better health outcomes and lower costs for their employees. <br /> Of all the opaque and confusing aspects of healthcare delivery, the legal agreements of employee health plans, may top them all. This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue except for the incontrovertible fact that what they’re hiding is literally decades of misaligned incentives that reward increased pricing rather than high quality care, positive health outcomes, cost effective pricing, convenient access and consumer-oriented navigation. What’s hard to comprehend is how many hands there are in the pockets of the American workers, siphoning off decades of hard earned wages and retirement savings. The irony is that these employer health plans benefit the insurance companies, third party administrators, health benefits managers, PBM’s, and hospital systems more than they benefit the employers or employees.  <br /> And let’s be clear – this is not a minor issue affecting a small percentage of the population. This is a huge issue affecting the majority of working Americans. What we’re talking about is not being able to afford healthcare and having to forego it to pay for housing costs, food, clothing, child care and transportation. What we’re talking about are tens of millions of Americans who can’t afford preventive medical care,