In this Summer Short Episode of Relentlessly Seeking Value, host Stacey Richter discusses the hidden costs and inefficiencies of value-based care with Elizabeth Mitchell, President and CEO of the Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH).

They uncover how value-based care, often touted as the ideal system, can be manipulated by middlemen to extract more money from plan sponsors without delivering real value to patients.

Through a critical conversation involving examples and insights from various experts, they explore the disconnect between financial incentives and actual care quality in American healthcare.

Elizabeth argues for for-real alternative payment models that are transparent to the employer plan sponsors. She wants prospective payments or bundled payments, and she wants them with warranties that are measurable. She wants members to get integrated whole-person care in a measurable way, which most health plans (ie, middlemen) either cannot or will not administer.

Elizabeth says to achieve actual care that is of value, cooperation between employers, employees, and primary care providers is crucial (ie, direct contracts). She also says that this whole effort is really, really urgently needed given the affordability crisis affecting many Americans. There's been just one article after another lately about how many billions and billions of dollars are getting siphoned off the top into the pockets of the middlemen and their shareholders.

These are dollars partially paid for by employees and plan members. We have 48% of Americans with commercial insurance delaying or forgoing care due to cost. If you're a self-insured employer and you're hearing this, don't be thinking it doesn't impact you because your employees are highly compensated.

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So, yeah … with that, here is your Summer Short with Elizabeth Mitchell.

10:36 What are members and providers actually asking for in terms of value-based care?

10:56 Why won't most health plans administer alternative payment models?

12:17 "We do not have value in the US healthcare system."

12:57 Why you can't do effective primary care on a fee-for-service model.

13:30 Why have we fragmented care out?

14:39 "No one makes money in a fee-for-service system if people are healthy."

17:27 "If we think it is not at a crisis point, we are kidding ourselves."