From Physician to Benefits Advisor: Danny Seidman on Fixing Healthcare from the Inside Out

Let's talk about the disconnect between what employers buy, or at least they think is [laughs] healthcare, and what patients need.

What do you think is the biggest disconnect?

Uh, I think that employers purchase point solutions.

They purchase health insurance.

They purchase health coverage, and patients need healthcare.

And we use those terms interchangeably quite often, but there is a difference, and I think that needs to be highlighted.

Can you go a little bit more on this and explain what's the difference?

Absolutely, yeah.

So health insurance sounds great in theory.

You know, we give our people options.

We give our people the ability to take their card and go anywhere they want.

But with that comes a lot of waste, a lot of fraud, a lot of confusion about where's the best place to go in terms of cost and quality.

Uh, when you purchase healthcare as an employer and you give that to your people, they have a path.

They know that if I go down this path, I'll have low-cost care or no-cost care and high-quality care.

And I think that's the biggest difference.

And employers, again, best of intentions, but there needs to be a little bit more intelligence around the design of purchasing healthcare versus health coverage or insurance.

Big difference.

[laughs]

Big difference, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, what's the move that gives a plan real control over the quality?

Uh, the move is price transparency and claims transparency.

We hear this word a lot.

We hear it often.

However, when a lot of my clients initially go to their broker advisor, they're given a, a proprietary report and told that, you know, further data is confidential or it's proprietary or that, uh, we can't share that because of HIPAA-related concerns.