As prices for drugs and procedures soar, and health insurance premiums for employer-based and individual policies inexorably climb, more than are few people are asking: Is the health care industry spiraling out of control?
Liana Bailey-Crimmins, a top official with California’s public employee benefits and retirement system (CalPERS), offered a simple response.
“Yeah,” she said.
But Bailey-Crimmins is in the driver’s seat at one of health care’s most powerful vehicles — and she has some ideas about how to slow costs down. The decisions she makes ripple far beyond the state workers and retirees she represents, affecting the cost of health care for the entire state, if not the nation.
“To me, I think you can either sit in the passenger seat … or you can go into the driver’s seat and effect change,” she said.
This year, the state’s pension giant will spend an estimated $9.1 billion to insure its 994,000 current employees and 467,000 retirees and their dependents. That makes it the second-largest health care purchaser in the nation, behind the federal government.
Keep reading this article on the California Healthline