During Workshop in Texas, Business Leaders Discuss Rising Health Costs, Employee Dissatisfaction with HMOs

More than 130 business leaders met March 19 at a workshop sponsored by the Dallas-Fort Worth Business Group on Health to discuss solutions for high health care costs, the Dallas Morning News reports. Marianne Fazen, executive director of the business group, said, "Our large employers are very concerned. They don't want to scrap the system and give up on health care benefits, so they're looking for creative strategies to make it work." Several industry analysts told employers that health care costs, which have increased 50% over the last five years, will continue to rise. Helen Darling, president of the Washington Business Group on Health, said that annual costs for family coverage could top $10,000 by 2004, up from $7,000 in 2001. She said, "Corporate America cannot make or sell enough in this economy to keep absorbing these increases." Maureen Cotter, a global practice director for the management consulting firm Watson Wyatt & Co., said that solutions for controlling rising costs "take time to develop given the unprecedented conditions that human resource managers face" in today's economy. She added that both providers and consumers are "much savvier" now than in decades past and "won't buy into the promises of managed care." Cotter said, "They've been through managed care, and they hated it. Now they're more cautious. They expect more choice and the ability to make more decisions." According to a recent Watson Wyatt survey of 300 companies that provide health coverage to more than 10 million people, about 18% have "aggressive[ly]" tried to control costs through several initiatives, including increasing employee choice in designing health care benefits, contracting directly with providers and buying disease management programs separate from health plans. Cotter said, "The mood reflects the recognition that this is a daunting challenge we're facing. It's not a one-year phenomenon. We're really going to have to tackle this with a lot of business discipline" (Rivera, Dallas Morning News, 3/20).