Small Companies with Big Insurance Problems

Small companies make up the economy in the US plain and simple. Unfortunately they are not the ones that killed the golden goose (Wall Street earnings, and the money supply chain) the giant multi-national companies are the ones who hve, though the little guys are going to be left with lots of pain. The pain I am talking about is, how as an employer I pay my employees, and keep them as employees by giving them competitive health insurance and other valued plans.

The key to survival in my opinion is understanding the 3 buckets of most benefit plans: inpatient/outpatient medical services, office visits, and pharmacy benefits. Maybe soon insurance carriers will cease to have pharmacy cards? Walmart, Costco, Target, CVS, and even Walgreens are now offering their own pharmacy plans. With market consolidation, there will be more...as such, I believe I will be buying a "catastrophic" major medical plan (for hospital services, surgeries, catastrophic illness) and perhaps limited medical or "office visit" driven copay plans for the few visits a year to the doc, and then as far as medicine is concerned, I will see consumerism at its best, and be left to compare the "copay" to get my prescription at Costco, versus Walmart. As both an expert in this field, and a consumer, it sounds good to me.

So think about it, we bring the cost of health insurance down, as we unbundle services, and leave the consumer to be able to buy these 3 buckets independently at reasonable prices, without being deemed "uninsurable" as a result of being asthmatic for example.

My thoughts for the day.