In this “How Would You Fix It?” interview, Julie Rovner, KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent and host of the What the Health? podcast, sat down with Elizabeth Mitchell, the president and CEO of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, which represents many large employers and other institutional buyers of healthcare coverage.
Mitchell noted that employers, which offer coverage to more than 160 million Americans, are a big player in the nation’s healthcare system — a role they came into because of “an accident of history,” she said.
“They weren’t looking to get into the healthcare business,” she continued, but “they were looking for alternatives to wages when there were limits on what they could offer, and they started with what was a pretty inexpensive offering — helping pay for hospital care — and that has now grown to be the second-largest line item in their budgets after payroll.”
Rovner and Mitchell discussed the fact that while large employers do have market power, the rest of the healthcare system banded together in response.
“There’s been this arms race of consolidation, meaning that even the largest employers in the world are smaller and don’t have the leverage many times,” Mitchell said.
