FUTURE TRENDS

If you can imagine a world where you can see a medical practitioner at the push of a button and have the pharmacy deliver your prescription to you during the day, that is fast becoming a reality. For any employer that puts its people first, if better is possible than good is no longer an option. Your customer is your people. They no longer compare you to the status quo or what a competitor offers. You are compared to the best service that has ever been received from anyone.

Stop benchmarking yourself against others and start by becoming authentically remarkable. If your business pursues the market leaders benchmark, your company will forever be a follower. Imitation is not strategic.

Featured

'SKIN IN THE GAME' IS NOT WORKING

The year was 2003 and I was working with a Fortune 500 company in Austin, TX that would be the first large employer (10,000+ covered employees) to launch a consumer driven health plan (CDHP). The savings the company realized from the federally mandated high deductibles would be redistributed in the form of health savings account (HSA) dollars so employees and their dependents could be better stewards of their own money. Employees loved that the money in the HSA was theirs to keep and they would not lose it at the end of the year (FSA) or when they left the company (HRA).

As we flash forward to the 2019 healthcare marketplace, average deductibles for employer health plans have