Like it or not, you are running a health insurance company. The only question is: how are you running it?
If we are being honest, no one really likes to talk about health insurance. It’s expensive, confusing, and kind of a black box. All we know is that costs continue to go up, benefits continue to go down, and “it is what it is.”
What if I told you, it could be different?
What if I told you, it could be better?
What if I told you, you could be inspired, engaged, and interested in healthcare?
I’m sure there is skepticism. It sounds too good to be true, or it’s a pipe dream. That’s fair. Personal experience and history would validate that opinion. But I think we underestimate what can be done, the potential we possess, and the positive outcomes that can be created.
People’s lives, and livelihoods, are at stake.
We are talking about thriving and flourishing!
What could be more inspiring, engaging and interesting than that?
And to fix this, address this, tackle this, we need to start in an unexpected place…our mindset.
Yes, our mindset and how we, as businesses, view and engage purchasing healthcare.
Many are familiar with the parable of going upstream to solve a problem. You know the one: you witness and save child after child from drowning in the river. Eventually you ask, “why do children keep falling into and floating down the river?” This question, paired with curiosity, takes lifesavers upstream to identify where and how children keep falling in.
With healthcare, we are currently stuck downstream receiving what we’ve historically always gotten: status quo and ever-increasing insurance costs. We need to be proactive, spark curiosity and go upstream to examine our mindset, and change the way we view offering, paying for, and purchasing healthcare. Specifically, owning the idea and reality that when we offer health insurance to employees, we are effectively in the healthcare business.
This slight change, from “we offer health insurance” to “we are in the healthcare business” completely transforms how we view, manage, and lead in this responsibility. As a result, the role is no longer seen as a necessary evil; rather, it becomes like any other business expense we oversee: invested in, managed, scrutinized, audited, reviewed, vetted, and transparent.
Currently, a majority of companies ‘offload’ this responsibility to the insurance carrier and say, “you take care of this, please.” And don’t get me wrong, carriers have a place in providing healthcare. But is this who we want running our healthcare business? A for-profit, stock price-driven entity? The adage that the current system is “broken” is a quasi-truth…it’s broken for some–the patients and employers paying for it–but working exactly how it’s supposed to work for Wall St. insurance companies and hospital systems. We would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge the mis-aligned incentives here. Hint: if healthcare costs go up, so do profits for carriers.
The insurance carriers aren’t going to save us from ourselves; we must do that. And we start by gaining a new perspective, a new approach, a new mindset.
There is plenty to say about alternatives and solutions, but that’s downstream, and the point of this piece is to bring us upstream to our mindset.
So, as we begin 2025 and have 2026 healthcare decisions in front of us, why not take on a new mindset, get inspired to impact lives, and make healthcare ‘cool’ to talk about!
