Sign Banking Presentation New Hampshire Now

Industry sign banking new hampshire claim fast

I figured I'd start with a headline of what I'm going to talk to you about today it is it sounds a little doom and gloom but I think that there's a silver lining so here's my headline my headline is the economy is tough but New Hampshire is doing better than most and the second headline is health care is expensive but we're here to help so let's see if I could accomplish that as I go through the presentation okay so what's going on in New England first I think everybody knows that we're in a recessionary economy I don't think that's news to anybody some of the predictions that we have here one mostly through the New England economic partnership it's predicting that we're going to lose around 250,000 jobs by the middle of 2010 here in New England that's quite high as folks would know but the good news here's the silver lining and this is what I attempted to do throughout my presentation is New Hampshire and Vermont are expected to do better than the other New England states so they believe it's gonna be an issue but not not we're not going to be as heavy hit as other states the second important point that is noteworthy for this state because it does impact healthcare impacts healthcare quite dramatically is that we are aging faster than the United States now how does that happen people say how can we be aging faster we all grow up we go up a year every single year well what's happening is New Hampshire policies seem to be attracting more of Medicare population or an elderly population I know Stephen Reno in the past has talked about the u.s. NH and their goal to try at the 55 percent initiative to try to keep younger folks here in New Hampshire when they get college educated and staying here well in healthcare as we continue to attract more and more of the aging population what does that mean it means that you would expect utilization to grow so there's true primary components of premium one is unit cost so what does it cost at the hospitals to deliver services and at the doctor's offices in utilization as you have an older population the utilization is going to go up because as we all age we require more healthcare services so not necessarily bad that we're interested in having a very diverse population to include a heavy population in the elderly population but from a healthcare perspective that is tough on the premiums so if you look at the screen you'll see we're tracking at the average age in the US the average age is 36.4 and in New Hampshire it's thirty nine point three so slightly higher so what does that mean in health care premiums Harvard Pilgrim specifically started increase in premiums nine to eleven percent year over year health care health insurance is a burden to employers we understand that fully and we understand that it's our position in our job to try to soften that burden and to try to make it easier for you again good news for consumers here in New Hampshire we should be very proud of our employer community they have taken on the commitment to offer insurance to their employees and dependents of those employees we have a higher percentage of New Hampshire employers willing to stay in that obligation so it's something that we should be very proud of as a New Hampshire business industry so the short story here from the local economy insurance is going to be a burden for the employers in the state of New Hampshire but one that we hope to help employers continue to work on in the coming time so national activity I know everybody's been watching the election very close everybody knows President Obama one of the things that he's been very interested in is making health care a centerpiece of what he does what does that mean in the short term what we fully anticipate and certainly there's been some activity that's already happened in this space we fully expect what's called s chip to be reauthorized s chip to put it in terms for New Hampshire is New Hampshire healthy kids that is the program where children in the state of New Hampshire can get access if they can't afford insurance so that is going to be reauthorized and potentially expanded so one of the goals of the Obama administration and I think something that will impact us very favorably here in New Hampshire is expanding health insurance for children so we have a smaller percentage of our children uninsured in this state but no child should be without insurance and we fully expect that Obama will make that a centerpiece of what he's doing the big question on the table is Obama has made it clear that he's very interested in universal health care can the country afford it the Democrats is enough Democrats to work on this agenda but are there enough Republicans that you're going to get to support a universal health care program that remains to be seen certainly there was a tremendous amount of energy devoted to this topic during the presidential election time and even post election with President Obama we do believe will continue to be a centerpiece but we don't know outside of s chip how quick the country is going to be able to handle in a universal access program it will be costly there are ways to do it potentially that can certainly be less costly than others but it is a costly component to our country so that remains to be seen so how can employers and consumers bend the trend so I really want to blend both the employer view and our view so the people who use the healthcare system day in and day out and this is what Harvard Pilgrim truly believes is part of the answer to the question so I'm gonna start not I'm not necessarily gonna go in order but first you know people would I hear commonly as I go out in the marketplaces people are very afraid of high deductible health plans they're afraid that the cost for when they need care is going up and people characterize that as a bad news story the flip side of that is that the more that people have higher deductibles the goal is is to get people to think twice before using unnecessary services but you have to do it right and the health insurance industry has to do it right what I mean by that is that we want to make sure that preventive care is still accessed people should keep themselves healthy and we absolutely need to make certain that in our product designs that we encourage that so we keep low cost sharing on those items that will help you stay well but the deductibles good or bad is a way that employers back to the first slide when New Hampshire employers are still continuing to offer health insurance the deductibles are a way to get the premium in a position where the employers can still keep that part of their employment package without introducing deductibles premium we talked about premiums going up 9 to 11 percent if we still have that old traditional managed care where everything was a five dollar copay trust me when I tell you why trends would be in the 20% range so part of the answer has been that employers are purchasing different types of health insurance plans those include deductibles sometimes insurance good news is the country has done some things to help people feel less of a burden as they transition to these plans and that is what you see on the second-to-last bullet it's the alphabet soup it's HRAs HSA EFSA's but what that all means is the health reimbursement accounts health savings accounts flexible spending accounts if you're an employer in the room and you have not yet looked into what those can do for you I would highly recommend that you do so there are tax sheltered ways to offset some of the deductible exposure for your employees as consumers if your employer is looking or offers you a health risk assessment a health savings account or a flexible spending account try to learn what that would mean to you and adopt that because it is a way for you to set aside money tax-free that can be used as you feel the pain of having a deductible when you go to the doctor okay so I would encourage you to learn more about that if you don't already know about it one thing that we're all health claims are focusing on I would like to say that I think Harvard Pilgrim does this best is in the space of wellness and disease management and I think you probably hear about this all the time is that we it's a company pond all of us that we keep ourselves as well as possible and the health plan is here to try to help that make that a reality we need to give you tools as an employer as a covered life to keep yourself well and that comes from fitness reimbursement down to discounts on running shoes there's many many things that you can think of in the wellness space to an employer what you should if you're an employer when you're here representing an employer today work with your health plan and ask what are your disease management programs like what are your wellness programs like what can we partner together on that's the big message here you do need to partner with your health insurer they will make some services available to you so that you can bring services to your employee base like disease management programs or on-site wellness programs health carriers can often look at the data of your particular employer determine what services would be best to bring forward to your employer and then partner with you to make that happen so again what can we do summary and then I'm done is partner with your health plan really talk about what does it mean what do you do for disease management what do you do for wellness how we work in this together look at as an employer what's called a defined contribution all that means is we really encourage folks to do what's called an active open enrollment so when you go to elect your health insurance er over year don't make it a silent open enrollment make people think about it make them fill out an application of what kind of insurance they want that way they can make a thoughtful decision just like you make a thoughtful decision as a consumer in any other market you do business and do define contribution what we mean by that is instead of a percentage of health insurance so when you say we're going to offset 50 percent of your health insurance cost do a fixed amount that way if somebody is choosing a more comprehensive plan they have to pay more than the person who's choosing a two thousand dollar deductible plan it's a way to make sure that there's transparency to the covered life in the whole healthcare space and that's a to my presentation so partner with your health insurer there's a way to make it work and to keep costs under control thank you very much