Episode Details

Here's a Milton Friedman quote: "There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it [that entity] stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Okay, so this is Friedman, Milton Friedman, pretty much the most influential advocate of free market capitalism, stating quite clearly that an entity's greatest responsibility lies in the satisfaction of its shareholders. His nod to social responsibility or ethics of any kind comes at the end there, where he says that for free market capitalism to function, there must be open and free competition and no fraud.

So, let's compare this to what's going on in the payer space in the healthcare industry. First off, there was just a chart in the New York Times the other day where pretty much every major payer except one got a check in a box for being accused of fraud. Interestingly, if you look in the comments section of that article, people posted links where that one outlier was being accused of fraud. So, I'm not sure what's up with that, but yeah, let's just conclude that there's fraud in the payer space.

On to Friedman's requirement for open and free competition. As we all know, there are a few very powerful, very big, consolidated entities who control the vast majority of the market with both regulatory capture as well as the capital to continue to buy more and more adjacent businesses, as well as any threatening upstarts and just close them down.

As I often hear said, we're gonna wind up with single-payer healthcare but maybe not the single payer most people are thinking of. If anyone thinks that in the highly consolidated payer space there is open and free competition, send me a note. I'd love to hear from you. I mean, even if what I've just said is 50% or 75% true, we're still outside of Friedman's definition of functional free market capitalism in the payer space.

I wanna shift gears now to discuss the rules of the game, and this is really the topic of today's podcast. Friedman said in that quote above that there are rules of the game that entities abide by. Therefore, these rules of the game are inarguably consequential. And in this healthcare podcast we're talking about how these rules of the game echo when it comes to payers—companies that are publicly traded on Wall Street with shareholders.

So, that's your spoiler for where this episode is headed. But before we go there, let me just say one or two things to the many listeners who I would consider certainly part of our Relentless Tribe who also work for payers. If you work for a payer, you have a few options. One of them is to do as much social good as you can to offset even a little piece of the not so good going on.

The other is to help those working elsewhere in the organization to understand the full impact of their actions and the hope that they figure out a way to be less financially toxic to members. You have already taken the first step, because simply by listening to the show, you see the problems with clear eyes.

The larger question, though, is this: Is it possible to do well by doing good vis-à-vis leveraging the power of market forces to efficiently help patients, even if shareholders are demanding otherwise? Well, it ain't working out so great so far, just comparing us to the rest of the world. But the more white hats we have, the better.

So, keep advocating for patients in the belly of the beast, and there's always a whistle around to blow should it come to that. Meanwhile, let's focus our clear eyes on where we are from a patient's eye view—just briefly here, because we've discussed this all before in great depth.

Here's some stats to a Commonwealth Fund

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