In the Company Health care plan we have about 85,000 eligible associates. The rest of our associates are represented under collective bargaining agreements and their benefit plans are provided through other funds. So where we innovate and where we try new things really within the company plan, and thats where the target Pricing Initiative is today. So thats where ill focus our discussion for this afternoon. Mainly, we operated Grocery Retail centers throughout the country, but we also have distribution centers, fuel centers, manufacturing centers, fine jewelry stores. Usually get a few eyebrows that raise a message or restores but we are one of the larger jewelry chains in the country as well. To talk a little bit about what our objectives are with on health care plan, we really focus on trying to keep it simple for 350,000 people to try to understand what we are trying to accomplish with the Health Care Benefits that we provide to them. We really focus on objective. The first one is t
Information, so they know which providers are at or below the Reference Price and you need to arm them with the quality information, how often are these providers performing these procedures . What is their volume, what are their outcomes . It would be really unfair to implement a Reference Price if you arent going to arm them with that kind of information. That goes into the next one, which is consumer education. I think there will be case study examples of how informing your employee population and educating consumers about the price and the quality and that and the correlation between the two will be really very important because you dont want consumers to get into a got you situation where they didnt know that someone was above the Reference Price and now they have a pretty extreme financial out of pocket liability. The last one is adequate networks, it might not be an appropriate term here, because usually these are providers within an established network. So i use the term networ
Imagine from the title of its organization and this includes more than 3000 Public Schools and agencies and state employers covering more than a million and a half and david is here to tell us about the calpers reference pricing and its impact on health care and the cost as andrea has said that he might been promised that he might. We thank you for coming. Thank you, ed. Okay. Im going to talk about this program for hip replacement and it provides Health Benefits for 1. 1 million members statewide and that includes active and retired state employees including school districts. About a third of those end up in the preferred provider organizations with Anthem Blue Cross of california and we spent about 7. 75 billion and the impetus for referencebased pricing was also a variety of studies in this includes for Knee Replacements and we looked at cost drivers and it turned out that the osteoarthritis is one of the drivers in about a third of those costs come from hip or Knee Replacements. In
Sometimes a thousand dollars a month. I mean, you know, its a wide range. Some people will get subsidies and support and pay less. But theres this group in the middle who make just enough, they get no subsidy, and the price of their premiums for their plans is going up dramatically. But moreover, and this is just what after 36 meetings in my own district their deductibles, their deductibles, they fear, are at a level where unless you have a Catastrophic Health event in your family, you really dont have Health Insurance because youre paying upwards of 12, 15,000 where it was 2 or 3,000. And so they may go without, because you have a guarantee issue. So you can always go to the emergency room, right . The penalties are not more than the premiums. I think this is the chaos im talking about out there on the ground in communities all across america. A quick follow up . Sure, of course. Has there been time to actually figure out as this legislation has been going on which is the worst case .
Just towed out of here just a little while ago. This is what it looked like while investigators pieced together exactly what happened. According to police, the driver of the red bmw sedan was headed southbound on columbus avenue and missed the turn on to pacific avenue. The car came crashing to a stop several feet into the restaurant and bar. Behind the bar, we were lucky we just werent, you know, mere feet away from where we were standing. Its crazy. The patron got injured but he will be okay. As a result of our investigation we conducted a warrant check and we determined the driver of the vehicle was actually wanted out of sacramento county, 250,000 warrant for possession of marijuana for sale. Reporter the police did not release the name of the driver but did say he would be tested to see if he is under the influence of any drugs or alcohol while he was driving. You can see right there, that is the bits and pieces that were left of the door that that car came crashing into. There we