Stop Buying Insurance. Start Buying Health Care.
Most employers don’t really want to buy health insurance.
They want their employees and families to be able to get excellent health care when they need it, without having to worry about whether a doctor’s visit, lab test, MRI or surgery will create a financial crisis.
Insurance can have an important place, especially for truly catastrophic expenses. But as Matt Ohrt says in this episode of Take Charge with HELPcare, employers need to stop thinking only about buying insurance and start thinking about buying health care.
Matt is the Executive Director of the Free Market Medical Association and author of Save Your Company, Don’t Feed the Beast and Good Care Feels Different: A Story About Direct Primary Care. Before moving into this national advocacy role, he spent about 25 years in human resources leadership, including his work at Merrill Steel, where he helped redesign the company’s health plan.
Matt's story is powerful because it didn’t start with a grand theory. It started with a practical business question.
Merrill Steel was already self-funded, but costs were still rising by about 10 percent per year. The owner asked Matt whether he could help. That question led to what Matt describes as a second career.
One of his early “aha” moments was realizing how differently employers treat health care spending compared with almost every other business expense. He tells the story of needing approval and paperwork for a $350 vacuum, while signing a $700,000 stop-loss agreement with much less scrutiny.
That’s upside down.
Employers compare prices when they buy equipment, supplies, vehicles and services. They look for value. They walk away from bad deals. But in health care, they often accept networks, hidden prices and annual increases as if there’s no alternative.
Matt argues that the power of the buyer is the ability to walk away from a bad deal and choose a better one. But if the employer and employees are trapped inside a network, and nobody can see the real prices, they’ve lost much of that power.
That’s where Direct Primary Care becomes so important.
Matt describes DPC as the foundation of the free-market medical movement. It’s flexible enough to work for individuals, families, small employers, large employers, fully insured groups and self-funded plans. It also becomes the trusted front door of the health plan, helping patients get better primary care and helping guide referrals to high-value specialists, imaging, surgery and other services.
At Merrill Steel, DPC was the starting point. From there, Matt and the company added lower-cost MRIs, physical therapy, chiropractic care and direct options for surgeries. The result was better access, better care and major savings.
This isn’t just about cutting costs. It’s about buying better care more wisely.
That’s also the purpose of the Minnesota Chapter of the Free Market Medical Association event, Building a Better Employer Health Plan, on August 5 in Rochester. Matt will be the keynote speaker. I'll be speaking about direct primary care, and we’ll also hear from other leaders offering practical solutions in pharmacy, physical therapy, direct contracting and plan design.
If you’re an HR leader, CFO, CEO, business owner, school district leader, city or county official, or broker who is tired of the same old renewal cycle, this conversation is for you.
Watch the interview below, listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then click the event link to learn more about joining us August 5.
It’s time to stop merely buying insurance.
It’s time to start buying health care.
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