Healthcare Costs on the Run

Community Comments

     Whether the 3 percent of workers who lost their healthcare coverage wound up purchasing their own plans, entering the Medi-Cal rolls or dropping into the burgeoning ranks of the state’s some 7 million uninsured residents is unknown. What’s apparent, however, is that the uninsured population is a critical force in driving costs upward.            
     “The whole issue of the uninsured needs to be addressed in order to control (healthcare) costs,” says Nabil Musallam, senior vice president of medical operations, managed care and contracting at the University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.            
     “It’s kind of a vicious circle that feeds on itself: The less coverage we have for employees, the more we spend on them in hospitals and emergency rooms; because they don’t have insurance and can’t pay, the more it increases healthcare costs and the more premiums go up.”            
     The UC Davis system provides about $150 million of free services each year, he says, the cost of which has to be absorbed by the paying customers.  UC Davis is the primary service provider for the indigent in Sacramento County.

Strategies
     So with a problem that’s difficult for a layperson to understand and one that so far has defied resolution by even the most enlightened among us, Prosper asked experts for cost containment strategies that employers could begin using immediately to hedge against the rising costs of healthcare.  

Lower Expense vs. Higher Premiums
Continued...