PrintPrintEdward Sellers, chairman and CEO of BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, said the U.S. House “let loose Armageddon” by passing a health reform measure. But he also said the reform effort has brought hospitals and insurers closer together in an effort to make the best of a bad situation.
By Scott Miller
smiller@scbiznews.com
Published Nov. 11, 2009
Edward Sellers, chairman and CEO of BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, called the health reform legislation passed by the U.S. House “Armageddon,” saying people actually will drop insurance coverage as costs rise.
But he also said the reform effort has brought hospitals and insurers closer together in an effort to make the best of a bad situation. Mainly, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina is now working with hospital systems across the state to change the fee-for-service health care system and identify the best preventive health care practices at the lowest cost.
“The health reform will make us move a little faster,” Sellers said of his partnership with hospitals.
He joined Michael Riordan, president and CEO of Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center, as a panelist this morning at the “Health Care Reform & Your Business” installment of the Power Breakfast Series hosted by GSA Business. Riordan agreed with Sellers, saying the hospital’s relationship with insurance companies is a bit less adversarial because of Congress’s effort to reform health care.
But the two disagreed about the bill’s potential impact.
Sellers asserted that a public option for insurance would cut into 90% of his company’s membership and bankrupt hospitals across the state. The public option would be far less expensive than BlueCross, as Medicare already is, he said, so customers would leave private insurers, and hospitals would effectively receive smaller payments for services.
The government must mandate continuous minimum-benefit health insurance participation based on personal income if the reform effort is to succeed, Sellers said. In the current bill, the House attempted to level out insurance cost among age groups. That means lower costs for older individuals and higher costs for those younger than 30, the folks most likely to be uninsured.
Under the current bill, the penalty for not buying insurance would be less than the cost of insurance coverage for young adults. That disparity increases the likelihood those people would opt out of coverage, Sellers said.
“That’s dangerous,” Sellers said. “They need to be part of the pool” to keep costs down, he said.
Riordan took issue with the idea that hospitals would go broke or that Sellers would lose that many customers. He said he’s also puzzled by the lack of support for public-option coverage.
“It’s amazing to me that small businesses don’t jump on the public-option bandwagon and get the burden (of providing coverage) off of them,” he said.
Riordan said he likes the reform’s focus on increased medical education, improved delivery methods and higher quality care. He agreed that more people need to be covered, citing the hospital system’s charity care budget of $90 million and bad debt of $45 million.
Looking forward, Riordan said the hospital will look to reduce cost through partnerships with other hospital systems, a move that could eliminate duplicate services.
“We simply can’t afford the medical arms race we’ve had in the past,” he said.
Sellers said hospitals should “slow down the growth of technical capacity,” because multimillion-dollar equipment sits idle much of the time.
He also said hospitals need to add the necessary physical infrastructure to support rural health care.
In the long run, hospitals and insurance companies have the same goal: improving preventive care, Riordan and Sellers agreed.
“Right care. Right place. Right time,” Sellers said, quoting remarks Riordan has made in past speeches.
Print