For many Americans, their job provides them with some type of retirement savings account. Historic legal action, laws, and regulations require that companies who offer retirement savings vehicles responsibly manage the money they invest on behalf of their employees. The investment options that employers chose must perform at a reasonable level. A company can’t push all of its employees to invest back in the company (as Enron did in the 1990’s) and a company can’t just take employees retirement savings accounts and put them in a low return savings account at a bank – the return to the employee in interest would be so small that it would be meaningless. Employers fiduciary duty requires that they offer legitimate retirement savings options that are in the best interests of their employees and will likely achieve a reasonable level of return on the investment. We understand this fiduciary responsibility for employers when it comes to our retirement savings, and now, some leaders are starting to look closely at the fiduciary healthcare responsibility of employers in the same way.
In his book The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call, Dave Chase explains his concerns regarding wage stagnation in the United States. He shows that real hourly wages in the United States, across all education groups, has fallen since 2007 (the book was published in 2019 making the time period of falling wages 12 years). At the same time that wages have fallen or stagnated, healthcare costs and expenditures have soared. With out of pocket spending rising, employer contributions to health plans going up, and patient premiums also getting more costly, Chase argues that the lost wage increases for American’s have been channeled into an under-performing healthcare system.
This is where the fiduciary healthcare responsibility of our employers becomes an important issue. Our employers are offering us (for about 50-65% of Americans) health insurance at the expense of higher wages. The money used for purchasing the plans offered to us and helping us access care, can be thought of like a retirement savings account. It is our money, and the company has a responsibility to ensure it is used in our best interest and that the products and services purchased with our money are safe, effective, and likely to provide us with a reasonable return on our investment. The healthcare dollars spent by our employers for health insurance today does not measure up.
Chase predicts a series of lawsuits targeting the fiduciary healthcare responsibility of employers in the near future. Lawsuits could target ever rising expenditures for diminishing or stagnant healthcare quality. They could address limits in services that hinder health outcomes for individuals. Companies could be on the hook for failing to do background checks on brokers or failing to shop for the best insurance plan for their employers. All of these issues are addressed by Chase in his book, and he believes that if employers took their fiduciary healthcare responsibility seriously, they could be a major asset in changing the future direction and costs of healthcare in the United States.
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