The Affordable Care Act—also known as Obamacare—is "not an affordable product" for many people and it does not fix the underlying problems causing high health-care costs, Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC on Wednesday.
"If we're going to fix health care, we've got to get at the delivery of care and the cost of care," Bertolini said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "The ACA does none of that. The only person who's really going to drive that is the consumer and the decisions they make."
"Getting everybody insured should probably be our goal, but you have to have a more affordable system," he added. "We have a 1950[-style] health care system in the Unites States."
Aetna said Tuesday that its medical spending rose more than estimates in the second quarter, due in part to the higher costs of covering patients who bought insurance under Obamacare for the first time. But the third-largest U.S. health insurer also reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue in the second quarter and raised full-year guidance.
"We have more people in the system using health care. So if you have coverage you are going to use it, particularly if you haven't had coverage before and have pent-up demand," the Aetna CEO explained. "Usually utilization and health care [also] pick up as the economy recovers, people get back to work and they get more coverage."
Article and video: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101879571
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It is worth mentioning what he stated at HIMSS:
Aetna CEO Bertolini Outlines 'Creative Destruction' Of Healthcare At HIMSS14
HIMSS is the annual healthcare IT tradeshow that now attracts over 1,000 exhibitors and about 37,000 attendees. This year’s week long event is in Orlando, Florida.
In just under 32 minutes, Mr. Bertolini’s keynote outlined what he sees as nothing less than the “creative destruction” of the business of healthcare. Here is a summarized version of his speech – which started easily enough with a definition of health.
[NB: edited for length and italicized words in brackets were added – often to aid the summary]
“What is health? Health is a more productive individual, who is economically viable, and is satisfied or happy. That should be our outcome. And yet our systems – here and around the world – everywhere around the world – are not functioning that way.”
“What do people want to hear when times are tough? They want to hear the truth. And so how should we define integrity. Well, integrity is based on information – not ideology. Integrity is focused on solutions not soliloquies. And finally, people want to know who’s accountable to execute – not who we ascribe blame to.”
“This is one of my favorite slides. This is how the healthcare system works. It was designed in 1945 after WW II and if you’ve ever been in this maze – and I have with my son and myself – you know how difficult it is to figure out how much things cost, where to go for care, how to follow up, where’s the office, how long do I have to wait – and it shouldn’t be this hard.”
“Now, I would argue that inside my organization today, with record membership, our largest acquisition, record revenue and this year higher profits and stock pricing than we’ve ever had – people would look at me and say why do we need to change now? It’s the perfect time to change – because the solution we need is not found in how well Aetna does – it’s in whether or not we meet that goal of healthier individuals [who] are more productive, more economically viable and that are satisfied. And when we do that with groups of individuals we solve that problem for communities and when we do it for communities we solve that for nations and when we do it for nations we solve it for the world. And until that’s done, no matter how well we do – or any of you do – it just doesn’t matter – because it’s not sustainable.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/24/aetna-ceo-bertolini-outlines-creative-destruction-of-healthcare-at-himss14/
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