Why Your Health Plan Renewal Keeps Feeling Like Groundhog Day

For a lot of employers, the annual health insurance renewal meeting feels like a bad version of Groundhog Day.

The numbers change. The frustration doesn’t.

Premiums are going up. Employees are already unhappy about what they pay. And the menu of “solutions” often comes down to deciding who gets stuck with more of the bill.

• Raise the deductible?
• Increase the employee contribution?
• Change the network?

Those may seem like necessary plan-management decisions. But they’re not really a health care strategy.

The reason is simple: You can’t spend less on health insurance unless you spend less on health care.

That doesn’t mean denying people care. It means helping them get the right care, in the right place, at the right time, before small problems become expensive ones.

That’s the idea I want to explore in this five-part series.

We’ll start with Direct Primary Care, or DPC: a membership-based approach that makes primary care easier to use and changes the incentives for the practice. Then we’ll look at self-funded health plans, where employers have a more direct financial interest in the actual cost of care.

From there, we’ll put the two together and answer some practical questions:

• Why does DPC fit so naturally with self-funding?
• Why does better access to primary care matter to both employees and the plan?
• What can employers do to improve the way care is accessed without getting between patients and practitioners?

And finally, we’ll talk about what DPC doesn’t do. It isn’t insurance. It isn’t a magic wand. Hospitals, specialists, surgery and catastrophic claims still matter.

But if the front door to the health care system is easier to open, people have a better chance to make good decisions before they’re in a crisis.

That’s where we’ll begin tomorrow: what Direct Primary Care actually is, and why changing the front door can change so much.

HELPcare Clinic is the only Direct Primary Care clinic in Southeastern Minnesota, with locations in Austin, Rochester and Albert Lea. Check out our membership options for individuals and for employers.

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Lee Aase

Lee Aase is the founder of HELPcare LLC, which provides comprehensive membership, marketing and management services for provider-owned HELPcare Clinics, as well as metabolic health education and coaching for people interested in restoring health and reversing disease through lifestyle changes. Lee and his wife Lisa live in Austin, MN and have six married children and 20 grandchildren.