Health Care is Personal. Let’s Make It Work for Everyone.
Tricia Keith
| 3 min read
Tricia Keith is President and CEO of Blue Cross Blue...
Health care is one of the most personal things we experience. It’s about life—bringing new life into the world, improving the quality of life and extending optimal health. And just like anything deeply personal, the way we engage with health care should reflect that.
The American health care system leads the world with incredible expertise, miraculous new therapies and promise of curing diseases once thought untreatable. But no American can benefit from it if they can’t afford to access it. That’s where health insurance comes in – and why we need to do much more to make health care affordable for everyone.
The health care system has competing forces at work. Hospitals. Physicians. Drug companies. Insurance companies. Government programs and regulators. Each plays a different role – but we all serve the same people. And right now, we’re collectively failing to deliver the promise of affordable, accessible care for the people we serve.
Health insurance costs are going up. But the cost of health insurance is the end of the equation. Driving those costs are a number of factors, including the health of our population, the use of health care services, the prices set by hospitals and drug companies for those services, the cost of technology, labor and other things. It’s complicated math. The solution is only found by working hard on every part of the equation, and we can only do that together.
Health care affordability is a personal — and local — issue for many Michiganians. It's personal because it affects their lives and their family budgets. It affects whether their employer chooses to provide good benefits. It impacts the age an older worker may choose to retire. It can weigh heavily upon a person’s plan to have a family someday. I’ll be talking about affordability often this year. I’ll be addressing the solutions Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is offering. I was honored to be on stage at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Policy Conference last week talking about it. I’ll be talking about it with our customers and millions of members. I’ll be talking about it here on this page. I hope you will come back and read more in the months ahead – and visit MIBlueDaily.com/affordability for more information about our commitment and our progress in working as partners within the health care system to make your health care work better and keep the price of it within reach.
The health care system won’t change overnight, and it won’t change unless we all get involved. We are ready to continue doing our part, showing up to partner and innovate, and we will not rest in our efforts to make sure health coverage and care is affordable.
Tricia Keith is president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Image: Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce
