The Wall Street Journal published a PR piece about how CEOs can fix health care. I think the piece is off base and posted the following reply:

How large employers can help fix health care:

 

1. Demand that Congress give equal tax treatment to buyers of group and individual policies.
2. Insist that all small group and individual policies be community rated by age rate band and that they all cover catastrophic financial losses, not preventive care nor primary care.
3. Get out of the health care business and grow your business. You’ll grow faster, pay more income taxes, recruit better employees and hire more people.
4. Give employees numerous health plan options until the politicians fix state and fed regulations of group and individual insurance markets. Your employees should choose the plans that fit their economic needs. You shouldn’t choose the plans that fit your economic needs.
5. Give your educated workers who are approaching or over 50 and are likely to read books “Younger Next Year” or “Younger Next Year for Women.” The books will do more to motivate your workers to exercise and stop eating junk foods than any expensive wellness program ever will.
6. If you give your healthy lifestyle employees better insurance rates than you give those who don’t live according to your dictates, stop it or be sued. Some are born to healthy lifestyles and many are born hungry and unable to maintain exercise routines without falling off the wagon. It’s not fair for the healthy to discriminate against the unhealthy.
7. Partnering with Kaiser or integrated health systems doesn’t make much sense. Leave health care to the pros, and get on with your real business.

Link: Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, on why we can’t stop eating. The Huffington Post. I’m reading this book and it should be read along with Younger Next Year.