Relentless Health Value

I’m gonna run through the five reasons Lauren Vela talks about in this healthcare podcast for the “why” with the inertia in benefits departments of self-insured employers. But before I do, let me report that, in sum, they add up to … in many cases, benefits folks sit between a rock and a hard place. You really can’t poke fingers at benefits teams who don’t have the bandwidth, the resources, the expertise, or the organizational power to, in essence, run a small insurance company in-house and also do the rest of their jobs. This is especially true when benefits teams get no help or air cover from the CFO or CEO of their companies. So, the bosses are, in effect, telling benefits teams to manage the second-biggest company expense—this uncontrolled thing growing at multiples of the rates of inflation. They say, “Go get a handle on that but also don’t make any noise, don’t disrupt anything.” And meanwhile, I don’t know, is the CFO under the impression that all he/she needs to do is pop by once or twice a year, issu