America's Health Insurance Plans opened its three-day annual conference in Portland, Oregon, Tuesday with an agenda that was more about health care delivery than about health insurance.
The Washington-based health insurer trade group organized a few panel discussions on running a health plan, but many more about themes such as tele-counseling services, paying for patients' meals and making the health care system more fair.
Matt Eyles, AHIP's outgoing CEO, said during his opening remarks that skyrocketing prescription drug prices and hospital consolidation are pushing up the underlying cost of health care, putting a financial strain on all Americans.
AHIP and health insurers need to work to increase the value and affordability of care, Eyles told attendees, according to a written version of his remarks provided by AHIP.
What It Means
AHIP has shifted its meeting focus away from what new supplemental health insurance products and new types of coverage are coming out in the fall, toward helping member insurers remake themselves as health care ecosystem managers.
COVID-19
AHIP is holding the current meeting three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemic surges forced AHIP to cancel two in-person meetings, and the group returned to having an in-person meeting in 2022, in Las Vegas.
At this week's meeting, Eyles recalled talking to an older man about how he was able to get a COVID-19 test early on in the pandemic.
"This story exemplifies our mission: delivering coverage and services to help take care of people," Eyles said.
The Costs
A team at actuarial consulting firm Milliman recently reported that the cost of typical employer-sponsored, preferred provider organization-based health coverage for a family of four has probably increased to $31,065 this year, up 5.6% from the typical cost in 2022.
But the Milliman team emphasized that coming up with a current cost estimate was difficult because economic conditions are so uncertain.
"Labor markets, supply chain issues, provider labor shortages and health care price transparency requirements all contribute to this unpredictability," the team said in the health care cost report.
