Major Employers Form Alliance to Help Transform Healthcare

Yet another alliance has been formed to help transform healthcare. This time 20 major employers, who represent 4 million employees and family members, have come together to improve how healthcare benefits are purchased.

The alliance will focus on reforms that can reduce redundancies and waste in the supply chain.

“The current system is unsustainable and it costs our employees too much,” Kevin Cox, the chief human resources officer of American Express, said in a statement. “Even the most successful companies won’t be able to afford the rising costs of health care in the not-too-distant future.”

The newly formed Health Transformation Alliance (HTA) will play a part of each participating company’s health strategy with the aim to increase innovation, better analyze data, and better leverage how corporations obtain coverage for workers.

In 2017, HTA will launch a pilot to help employees obtain more affordable prescription medications with other initiatives planned to begin in 2018 or later.

“Our priority in this coalition is supporting positive health outcomes for our strongest asset—our employees,” said Kim Hauer, the chief human resources officer at Caterpillar. “Health care benefits are too important to our people for us to sit on the sidelines; the status quo needs to change, and we have to be part of the solution. We are creating a better way of getting workers what they want and need.”

There are 4 main areas of focus of HTA:

1. Greater marketplace efficiencies
2. Learning from data
3. Educating employees
4. Breaking bad habits

“We have considerable work to do, and we expect this will take years to fully implement,” said Bill Allen, the CHRO of Macy’s Inc. “This is a major undertaking for each of us, but if we don’t do it now, the growth in health care costs will overwhelm all of us. We are proud to be pioneers who seek to transform and improve the way health care benefits are provided for millions of working Americans.”