June 4th, 2010 | 
Author: An excerpt from a Crowdsourced book on Social Tech which I’m contributing to. The book is called Enterprise Social Technologies.. Chapter 7// Step Six – Integration with Sales. (Btw, I understand that the author is now “getting some of the chapters back from the crowd and they are REALLY good… This book is going to rock.”)
The question then becomes, What is the corporate voice? What best captures the spirit and essence of the organization? Some companies use Meme’s like the Geico gecko. Some use the CEO, like Zappos. Others take a more traditional, albeit more Social, marketing and PR voice (e.g. Dell, H&M, Whole Foods, JetBlue). Sadly, many more are silent, apparently either paralyzed like deer in the mesmerizing headlight of a thundering train, or worse, suffering from that nasty corporate disease with symptoms like arrogance, stubbornness, complacency, and greed – with a little fear. Or both.
The problem with the health insurance industry
To be sure – I’m not perfect (too much debt, not enough savings, and battle daily a family curse of judgmental-ism (not that I’m making excuses). MY SOLE OBJECTIVE with the following content is to perhaps give industry folks a wake-up call. I will be curious on your take, so please don’t lurk and then Comment elsewhere….
It seems clear that the world is starting to see through our collective BS. We can’t hide behind corporate-speak any longer. “Oh, we’re a very conservative industry, filled with angry regulators. We can’t do all that Social stuff….” We must engage, become transparent, be humble, confess the issues mentioned above, and turn toward a more transparent culture. If we don’t, it’s just a matter of time before the social Web takes us to task and potentially ruins us. As I’ve heard many times before, we can either deal with our ‘sins’ privately in a proactive manner… Or we will be forced to deal with them publicly in a reactive situation. The choice is ours.
Matter of fact, I’ll go a step further with the possibly bold statement that might create the firestorm. This all might have just happened. The thought has occurred to me, and I might be out in left field, that the reason the health insurance industry just took what might possibly be a death-blow (at least on the major medical side of the business…lot of opportunity elsewhere)… might just be… because they did not have a voice, did not manage their online reputations either collectively or individually, and were thus were a sitting duck in a deadly world of viral information, gross misunderstanding of a very technical industry, and heated debate on two extremely sensitive subjects – health and money.
Think about it… With a few exceptions, many health insurance companies were (and still are) relatively ‘silent’ online wrt Healthcare Reform. At best, they issued long and boring White Papers or Press Releases, often too late to have maximum impact, often watered-down with a lot of marketing/legal/compliance corporate speak, and often with little to no Social aspects to them – no Video, no ShareThis, no Comments, etc.. Thus, like McCain in the election, they appeared symptomatic as described above in blue to the public and were stomped on by an aggressive and hostile Social Media machine. The public in turn did not engage with enough heat on their representatives to change their minds. Although many will say, “The problem is that the Feds didn’t LISTEN to the public. THEY were the ones that were arrogant and greedy – arrogant in that ‘We know better’ and greedy for power.” True – I agree. But perhaps if the insurance companies had been more transparent to begin with, the whole CF would not have started or might have been defused before it cost many their jobs and in some cases, their companies? In the final analysis, we’re trying to solve a problem that has been created by lack of information in the hands of the consumer – how much do health-related services and drugs cost, how can I shop around, what are the financial impacts of my personal choices, etc. If we had had good transparency instead of what is perceived as the silent treatment…
I dunno – like I said, I might be out in left field. Am I? Please Comment below.
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So, on a lighter note, I got to shoot my first MLS game a couple weeks ago. Major League Soccer, YT on the sidelines doin’ my thing!!!!… Hilarious really.
See all the pics here. (Short-cuts to highlights in color at the top.)
There were a couple US World Cup Team Players on the field! Too Cool!
Posted in Insurance-Technologies
Mike, great stuff.
I think it may be a little far to say that if health insurance companies had more aggressively pursued social networking, and thus a better dialog and understanding of their customers, that health care reform wouldn't have happened… I think reform of the entire health care system is probably a good thing…
I would submit however that the oversimplified and wrong minded attack on payers as the main problem might have been somewhat mitigated if they had earned a better relationship with their policyholders previously. Part of the reason an attack on payers is an easy thing to do politically is because most policyholders feel victimized by their insurance companies and not communicated with… Social media definitely should have been – and still can be – a component of a solution.
I personally don't believe health insurance is done as an industry. Not by a long shot. It will just change pretty drastically.
In regard to transparency, the push toward health care consumerism was a health insurance industry-driven innovation that occurred ten years ago – increased awareness and accountability about cost and quality of health care. Rather than shielding consumers, plans attempted to engage customers directly, empowering them through information (i.e., transparency) to take a decisive role in where, when, and from whom they receive care. In theory, if the consumer had skin in the game and started spending money like it’s theirs instead of someone else’s, the holy grail of cost containment will finally be attained. But, as we’ve all seen, this is a behavior change extraordinaire. Success, then and now, is grounded in education that removes intimidation and confusion that usually greets healthcare consumers. We need to strive to achieve educated buy-in and boost consumer confidence in their healthcare decisions via new media and old, whatever it takes.
And on the health care reform front let’s be real – the political process took over from the policy process early in the health care reform debate. It was highlighted by the town hall circuses last August, “death panel” rants, and those drinking presidential “haterade”. But revisiting history gets us nowhere. Health care reform is the law. And there are a lot of stakeholders in making it a success, not the least of which is the health insurance industry. Today’s question is how the insurance industry works together with regulators now responsible for implementation, so they too are a successful stakeholder (See NYT article “Two Health Care Adversaries Find a Need to Collaborate”, 6/4/10, http://nyti.ms/dodTRH).
Mike, another great and thought-provoking post. I agree with you on many fronts. The insurance industry handed the baseball bat to regulators, consumers, et al with which they proceeded to beat the industry into a bloody pulp, and then into submission.
I think “voice” is one of the issues. I think the underlying disconnect between insurers and consumers was largely self-inflicted and began many years ago when health insurance companies started referring to themselves as health “care” and disguising what they truly were — merely a BUDGETING tool (picture the Sham Wow guy, “Pay for your cancer with no down payment and only 12 easy installments!”).
By the time “Consumer directed health care” came around (a crappy label, in my opinion), it was too late. Insurers, providers and other partners had sufficiently over-complicated the health care delivery system, so that no average CDHC consumer could successfully navigate the health care labyrinth.
So, the Feds rode in on a political white horse to save the day. And, I believe they made it even worse. As always, the only true beneficiaries of their efforts will be lobbyists and lawyers.
Nice post and I think your points about the health insurance industry being passive and their lack of transparency are valid. The health insurance industry dodged a bullet in this latest round of reform. They are and always have been reactive and deserved to be taken to task for their lack of engagement – with the politicians, media, consumers and other stakeholders. I think Health Care reform has been a wake-up call for the industry and they surely recognize the need to collaborate with government – or else – the public option (aka nuclear option) will become a reality.
The problem would have existed anyway.
Politicians need someone to target, a bad guy.
In the case of health reform, insurers are the easy bad guy because nobody likes them.
Recisions were never widespread, but the few that hit the press made people's blood boil.
Very few people died at the hands of insurance company executives making medical decisions. You have to go to cases where people look to experimental treatments as a last resort to find these type of denials. (While over 250,000 people a year die due to medical errors at the hands of doctors and hospitals – this is the AMA's own statistic).
Insurance rates going up were more a factor of trend (inflation plus increased utilitzation) than of greedy insurance companies.
Total industry profitability is around 1% of total health care spending.
But insurers are easy whipping boys because they are the ones who have to pass on rate increases, deny benefits for non-covered experimental surgeries, etc.
There is little the industry could do and Karen Ignani tried in vain to get a seat at the table.
No, insurers were going to be the bad guy because a bad guy was needed to get health care done.
You have to create an enemy in order to get change and the enemy became the insurance industry – read Rules for Radicals and understand how it works.
Over the years of working on this issue, I have come to realize that very few people actually care about health insurance. What they care about is health care when they need it – this makes health care irrational in economic terms. There is also an asymmetry of information – the medical provider does and should know more about your condition than you do – making the price of services more expensive – it's why we pay more to see LeBron than high school basketball – he has an asymmetry of talent.
I submit that a universal fee schedule should be created for all medical services and doctors and hospitals should be allowed to charge whatever they want for their services. Let the free market work – if a hospital is worth more than the fee schedule let the consumer determine that.
Managed care was good for insurance carriers because it created a concentration of membership with BUCA – an oligopoly – think OPEC and then think BUCA in the same thought pattern.
The easiest way to solve the problem is model reimbursement levels on Medicare and empower consumers to select the medical provider of their choice who can charge them whatever they want. If the patient does not want to pay more, they'll shop around for care at a lower cost.