Health Affairs August 13, 2021
The 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Employer Health Benefits reports that 67 percent of employed, insured workers are covered under self-insured, or self-funded, arrangements. Under these arrangements, the employer, not an external insurer, directly bears the financial risk for the cost of employee health care.
Self-funded arrangements have grown steadily as a share of the insurance market over the past 15 years and now include many employers with less than 200 employees. While this may be the most cost-effective decision for individual employers under the current regulatory framework, it has the effect of locking in uncoordinated, open-ended fee-for-service (FFS) and locking out comparatively economical Integrated Delivery Systems (IDS).
An IDS is an organized, coordinated and collaborative network that links...