Employers seen passive on health-care costs

By Kim Dixon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employers have been passive in helping to drive change in the health-care system, even as they fret about the soaring costs of providing health care, several industry and government officials said on Monday.

"We've just been writing checks," Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corp, told an audience at day-long meeting of government and industry officials on health-care reform sponsored by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Intel, the world's biggest maker of semiconductors, buys health care for 60,000 employees, and expects to spend about $1 billion on health care annually soon.

Employers finance health care for about 160 million Americans, and have faced health-care costs topping the rate of inflation for several years.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association -- which through its individual members, including WellPoint Inc, insures one out of three Americans, or 100 million people -- agreed that employers had not been willing to use their purchasing power to drive change.

"A heretofore passive partner in this has been the employer," said Scott Serota, president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Employers could use the bulk of their buying power to drive more efficiencies in the system by demanding value for the health-care dollar, experts said.

The United States spends more on health care per capita than any other industrialized country, but ranks low on quality and high on costs.