Can employers focus on quality?

• Published in: Health Affairs Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 268 - 269
• Main Author: McNeill, D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States The People to People Health Foundation, Inc., Project HOPE 01.01.1998
• Subjects: Cost control; Darling, Helen; Decision Making, Organizational; Decisions; Employee benefits; Employees; Employers; Health Benefit Plans, Employee - standards; Health care; Health care expenditures; Health care industry; Health care policy; Health maintenance organizations; HMOs; Humans; Information dissemination; Mental health; Money; Physicians; Quality of care; Quality of Health Care; United States; Wages & salaries; Wealth; United States
• ISSN: 0278-2715; 1544-5208
• DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.17.1.268-a

To the Editor: Helen Darling's defense of the quality of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and her dispute of the charge that employers care only about costs sound like she "doth protest too much" ("Are HMOs Really Dangerous to Your Health?" a review of Health against Wealth: HMOs and the Breakdown of Medical Trust, by George Anders, Health Affairs, July/August 1997). Employers have created the demand for the new industry of managed behavioral health care based almost entirely on reducing costs, which has cut the average employer expense for mental health care by two-thirds over the past five years. Employers need to (1) provide a choice of all accredited plans; (2) distribute relevant information to employees to help them make decisions on plans, doctors, and care; (3) change the reimbursement system that allows people to buy care "with other people's money" by voluntarily shifting forgone wages and tax benefits back to employees; (4) stop "protecting" people from themselves and let them regain their own health destiny by making, and paying for, their own health care decisions; (5) get out of the way and let the market get healthy.