Health insurance carriers have been on the minds of lawmakers, consumers and federal officials over the past month.
In a Sept. 13 keynote given at the America's Health Insurance Plans' Medicare Conference in Washington, D.C., Donald Berwick, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, asked health plans to join in the effort to overhaul the American healthcare system.
"You have and will continue to have a profound influence," he told AHIP members.
The tension between health plans and President Barack Obama's administration was palpable at the AHIP meeting, as Berwick ended a rather congenial speech by noting, "When we need to, we can and we will play tough."
"We will make far more progress if we agree and work together and not at cross- purposes," he said. "We will either build it together, or not at all. We don't have time for games."
This echoed the sentiments of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a Sept. 10 letter to AHIP, in which she indicated she has "zero tolerance" for health plans that spread misinformation about healthcare reform laws and unjustifiably hike premiums.
Republican lawmakers have rallied to the defense of health insurers. Congressman Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), co-chairman of the GOP Doctors Caucus, on Sept. 15 called for a Congressional hearing on healthcare reform, with the hopes of repealing the reform legislation.
"I think it's important that we figure out what is going on here," he said. "Why are health insurers raising costs by 10 percent if ObamaCare is supposed to reduce costs?"
Meanwhile, consumers are apparently confused and hope their health plans can help them understand the changes created by healthcare reform.
According to a survey of 1,500 Americans conducted by Boston-based consulting firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, 75 percent of consumers see health insurance companies as responsible for lowering health costs, significantly more than those pointing the finger at government agencies (46 percent).
"The confusion around health reform is both an opportunity and a challenge for insurers to take a leadership role and become educators and trusted advisors for consumers to turn to," said Mark Carr, a managing partner of the Boston-based South Street Strategy Group. "This is just the first of many challenges health reform will pose for carriers."
As reform shifts a significant portion of the insurance market from wholesale to retail, Carr said, many insurers, who are largely B-to-B marketers, will need to develop more differentiated value propositions and go-to-market strategies.