Health plans beyond just Obamacare are paring lists of doctor and hospital choices for 2018 as they struggle to contain rising medical care costs by guiding patients to quality choices, insurers and health benefits consultancies say. “We are remediating high-cost provider contracts and building around high-quality, cost-effective networks,” Molina CEO Joseph White told analysts earlier this month on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. “This initiative will take time and will likely not show meaningful benefits until 2018.”But health insurers say these moves to rein in costs don’t mean their customers will be forced to see doctors and hospitals that lack quality. Insurers and employers would prefer to the words “high performance” be subbed in for “narrow” when talking about their networking strategies. Health benefits analysts say it’s not necessarily a bad thing if health plans and employers cull from their lists of doctors and hospitals those that aren’t achieving whatever quality metrics have been established.

Source: Forbes August 27, 2017 13:00 UTC