ChamberCare Could Aid Your Health Care Woes
Business News, Chamber News, Health Care, Human Resources April 3rd. 2008, 7:58am
In a shaky economy, most small business owners are searching for new avenues to be more frugal and to cut costs. The Indiana Chamber recognizes the need to save in these rollercoaster times. We’ve introduced a number of value added tools in recent years to help your bottom line. Health insurance continues to be at the top of the spending list for Indiana businesses. We encourage you to consider our ChamberCare health insurance discount program. Members of the Indiana Chamber have the opportunity to save 5% off of Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield health insurance just by keeping their Indiana Chamber dues current. The program applies for new Anthem accounts with 2-99 employees who are located outside of Marion County.
The savings from ChamberCare could allow you to reinvest the money in a variety of areas. Numerous members have mentioned the savings with ChamberCare allowed them to offer salary increases, Christmas bonuses and reinvest the money in equipment and training.
Membership with the Indiana Chamber also provides you with a number of free services like the HR HELPLINE and the Business Research Center. A discount on health insurance, questions answered on HR topics at no charge and free lists from our Business Research Center can provide a strong ROI to your company in just a matter of days.
Contact Abby Hamilton at the Indiana Chamber - 317-264-3793 or ahamilton@indianachamber.com to learn more about ChamberCare. If you do not have an insurance agent, we are happy to connect you with the appropriate regional contact at Anthem.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Paying for the wrong behavior and getting it
While a discount on health care insurance is no doubt a benefit, it completely fails to address the bigger problem of rising health care costs. For years we have depended on the insurance industry to manage one of our most significant costs, with dismal results. We have turned over to the insurance industry one of our most important business tools - the selection of what we want to purchase and how much we are willing to pay.
There is abundant data on which services we should value if we want lower cost and higher quality. By looking at the Medicare population researchers have found that the more primary care physicians there are per 10,000 enrollees the better the quality and the lower the cost. In fact what the studies show is that the higher the cost, the lower the quality.
As business leaders we are all aware of the costs benefits of quality, so this is no surprise. What is a surprise to me is that with this knowledge we continue to leave the purchasing decisions to insurance companies who have proven for 30 years that they cannot control cost or improve quality. We also pursue regulations and policies that prevent physicians from providing cost effective alternatives to our present broken system. This has to change and the change has to be led by those of us who are paying the bills, not by large public companies with primary responsibility to their shareholders and executives.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w4.184v1/DC1