Healthcare Financial News

U.S. employers have had an 80-year relationship with health insurers, sponsoring health plans that today cover 160 million Americans and their dependents. But as health costs continue to rise annually at near double-digit rates, the nation's employers are looking for more from health insurers to help them better manage their health benefit programs. A new report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute finds mixed satisfaction ratings with insurer-sponsored services and meaningful differences between what small and large companies want.

According to a survey of 250 small employers (those with fewer than 250 employees) and 100 of the large multi-national companies (with an average of 8,000 employees) small employers are less satisfied with their insurer-provided health services than larger employers.  Small businesses with less than 500 employees represent 99.9 percent of all employers in the United States according to the Small Business Association. Small business respondents reported greater dissatisfaction than big companies in 12 critical areas of service, including claims accuracy/timeliness, administration fees, provider discounts, wellness programs and online tools such as personal health records.

"Small employers could be the canaries in the coal mine for the employer-based model," said Michael J. Thompson, principal of PricewaterhouseCoopers' human resources services group.  "Given that the majority of American workers are employed by small business and that the erosion of insurance coverage is among small employers, insurers are keenly interested in understanding what all employers want and how they can adapt plan designs and service offerings to better meet their needs."

WellPoint, Inc., the WellPoint Foundation, and the X PRIZE Foundation have announced a landmark collaboration to develop a $10 million or more competition designed to generate new ways to address the nation's serious health care system challenges.

As part of this collaboration, WellPoint and the X PRIZE Foundation will solicit participation from employers, health care providers, consumers, government partners and any other interested parties to develop competition guidelines that reflect the health care industry's most pressing challenges. In addition, WellPoint has committed to test the selected finalists' entries in its state markets, in order to test their ability to result in viable, creative and achievable health care system changes. Transparency will be emphasized throughout the process, from development of the prize to the conclusion of the competition. All results will be shared publicly, with the knowledge gained considered non-proprietary.

At this time, WellPoint, the WellPoint Foundation and the X PRIZE Foundation are announcing their intention to collaborate to develop a prize; the actual award amount, competition rules and guidelines are expected to be finalized in early 2009. More information about the competition is available at www.xprize.org/wellpoint.