BISBEE'S BRIEF: Investing Today to Lead Tomorrow
President Trump met Monday at the White House with top health insurance CEOs. Anthem. United. Aetna. Cigna. Humana. BCBS. The gang was all there as the President framed an effort to “stabilize the insurance market and ensure a smooth transition to the new plan.”
The details will be hotly debated. The broad brush strokes appear to include eliminating the Medicaid 90/10 federal match, repealing the insurance mandate, introducing refundable tax credits, and elevating administrative flexibility for the states. There are, currently, more questions than answers.
Amid the uncertainty, it would be easy for Leading Health Systems to slam the strategic brakes on pursuit of the premium dollar. But as the saying goes, you don’t sell the umbrella just because you don’t know which day it is going to rain.
The smart players are continuing to invest today to lead tomorrow. They are focusing relentlessly on patients/consumers armed with evermore information and a desire for known costs. They are becoming increasingly agile, prepared to scale as opportunities emerge.
“Nobody knew,” said Trump to the National Governors Association (NGA) this week, “health care could be so complicated.” Repeal, at one level, was always misguidedly easy. Now, we are finally getting to the complex, hard (and hopefully bipartisan) work of the more realistic Revise.
Gary Bisbee, Ph.D., MBA, is the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of The Health Management Academy and co-author of n=1, How the Uniqueness of Each Individual is Transforming Healthcare. His leadership positions have spanned Wall Street, academia, health policy and entrepreneurial ventures in information technology, health services and medical devices. Gary received his MBA in healthcare and finance from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in chronic disease epidemiology from Yale University.