Comcast Reinvents Health Benefits
It’s wonderful that Comcast has helped improve health benefits but the story falls short. Making sick care less expensive to employees is not the same as improving their health.
It is certainly a good thing that Comcast and its employees pay less for sick care services. It will be an even better thing when they enjoy better health through a more holistic approach that embraces social determinants of health, Lifestyle, complementary therapies (e.g., acupuncture), and so on.
It’s hard to think of a company that seems less likely to transform health care.
It isn’t headquartered in Silicon Valley, with all the venture-backed start-ups. It’s not among the corporate giants — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase — that recently announced, with much fanfare, a plan to overhaul the medical-industrial complex for their employees.
And it is among the most hated companies in the United States, according to many surveys on customer satisfaction.
It’s Comcast. The nation’s largest cable company — the $169 billion Philadelphia-based behemoth that also controls Universal Parks & Resorts, “Sunday Night Football” and MSNBC — is among a handful of employers declaring progress in reaching a much-desired goal. In the last five years, the company says, its health care costs have stayed nearly flat. They are increasing by about 1 percent a year, well under the 3 percent average of other large employers and below general inflation.
Comcast, which spends roughly $1.3 billion a year on health care for its 225,000 employees and families, has steered away from some of the traditional methods other companies impose to contain medical expenses. It rejected the popular corporate tack of getting employees to shoulder more of the rising costs — high-deductible plans, a mechanism that is notorious for discouraging people from seeking medical help.
Most employers now require their workers to pay a deductible before their insurance kicks in, with individuals on the hook for $1,500, on average, in upfront payouts, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Instead, Comcast lowered its deductible to $250 for most of its workers.
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The HealthCare Too model provides for a collaborative holistic care approach to health. We look for articles and knowledge to help consumers and their care teams make holistic health decisions! We appreciate the value of surgery and pharmaceuticals but want to make more paths available for your HealthCare Too.
