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Matt Eyles, CEO of AHIP (Credit: AHIP)

Life Health > Health Insurance

Health Insurers Work to Reinvent Themselves

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What You Need to Know

  • America’s Health Insurance Plans' annual conference is focusing more on health care delivery than health insurance.
  • Matt Eyles, the AHIP CEO, plans to retire in October.
  • He, his successor and AHIP members will continue to be at the center of a legislative storm aimed at reducing federal spending.

America’s Health Insurance Plans opened its three-day annual conference in Portland, Oregon, Tuesday with an agenda that was more about health care delivery than about health insurance.

The Washington-based health insurer trade group organized a few panel discussions on running a health plan, but many more about themes such as tele-counseling services, paying for patients’ meals and making the health care system more fair.

Matt Eyles, AHIP’s outgoing CEO, said during his opening remarks that skyrocketing prescription drug prices and hospital consolidation are pushing up the underlying cost of health care, putting a financial strain on all Americans.

AHIP and health insurers need to work to increase the value and affordability of care, Eyles told attendees, according to a written version of his remarks provided by AHIP.

What It Means

AHIP has shifted its meeting focus away from what new supplemental health insurance products and new types of coverage are coming out in the fall, toward helping member insurers remake themselves as health care ecosystem managers.

COVID-19

AHIP is holding the current meeting three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemic surges forced AHIP to cancel two in-person meetings, and the group returned to having an in-person meeting in 2022, in Las Vegas.

At this week’s meeting, Eyles recalled talking to an older man about how he was able to get a COVID-19 test early on in the pandemic.

“This story exemplifies our mission: delivering coverage and services to help take care of people,” Eyles said.

The Costs

A team at actuarial consulting firm Milliman recently reported that the cost of typical employer-sponsored, preferred provider organization-based health coverage for a family of four has probably increased to $31,065 this year, up 5.6% from the typical cost in 2022.

But the Milliman team emphasized that coming up with a current cost estimate was difficult because economic conditions are so uncertain.

“Labor markets, supply chain issues, provider labor shortages and health care price transparency requirements all contribute to this unpredictability,” the team said in the health care cost report.

Inpatient hospital costs have probably stayed about the same, but the cost of the services of physicians and other health care professionals likely rose about 9%, the team estimated.

The Policymaking

Eyles announced plans to step down from the AHIP CEO post in October.

He, his successor and AHIP member companies are and will continue to be at the center of a legislative storm as members of Congress and members of the Biden administration try to find ways to reduce federal spending and reduce the size of the federal budget deficit.

Public and private health insurance privates and tax provisions often attract the attention of budget negotiators.

Officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget estimate that Medicare and Medicaid alone will lead to $20 trillion in federal government outlays during the decade running from 2024 through 2033.

The exclusion of group health premiums from federal income taxes will reduce federal revenue by about $3.4 trillion over the next decade.

One factor of the negotiations is that some of the federal budget policymakers might like the idea of having Eyles’ AHIP CEO post someday.

The most recent AHIP tax form available in the IRS tax-exempt entity database, for 2018, shows that Eyles started out with about $800,000 in annual base compensation.

Eyles’ predecessor as AHIP CEO was Marilyn Tavenner, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Over at the American Council of Life Insurers, the list of recent former presidents includes Dirk Kempthorne, a former U.S. senator.

Pictured: Matt Eyles, CEO of AHIP. Credit: AHIP.


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