On Health Care, Who Needs Congress?
Regardless of whether Congress enacts health care reform, the private sector isn’t waiting. Health care for our employees is too expensive, and the employer-based system must be reformed.

Two years ago, a small number of corporate chief human resources officers, led by American Express, Verizon and Macy’s, met to figure out if they could come up with a better way to provide coverage for their workers at more affordable rates. Individual companies had done all they could to improve the system, but each hit a wall. There was only so much one company could accomplish on its own. One year later, 21 companies with a total of four million employees began an effort to change the way they paid for health care.

Now 41 major corporations that represent over six million workers and retirees have joined together to reform the private-sector health care system. Our companies are diverse, representing pretty much every sector of the economy. Known as the Health Transformation Alliance, we’re troubled by the number of middlemen who drive up the price of care, and by the soaring costs of prescription drugs.

The members of the alliance spend $25 billion on health care and, as a result, have a lot of data that helps us identify trends. By studying where the money goes and its impact on patient health, we can see what treatments, which doctors and hospitals, and which medical networks get the best results. Data analysis from IBM is turning what used to be a blizzard of paperwork into a road map for the future.

There are things data can tell us that individuals have a hard time learning on their own. For example, if data tell us that 50 percent of patients who visit a particular hospital suffer a relapse for a particular medical condition while only 25 percent of patients who visit a crosstown hospital have a relapse for the same illness, we want our employees to know that — and if possible, to use the hospital with the better results. The data can save lives.