Rob Lynch
VSP Global CEO Rob Lynch co-authored an opinion piece for healthnewsdigest.com discussing how stand-alone ancillary benefits, such as vision and dental, provide an essential component of healthcare that should be included in any comprehensive healthcare reform efforts.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“The current proposal could have significant cost consequences for the medical delivery system. Dental and vision benefits play a critical role in improving the health of Americans and reducing the overall cost of chronic disease. With chronic disease representing 75 percent of the total U.S. spending on health care, few know that optometrists and dentists have the ability to detect symptoms of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, much earlier than primary care providers. Moreover, it is well established that Americans with dental and vision coverage are more likely to go to the dentist and optometrist or ophthalmologist for regular preventive care and obtain needed early treatment related to dental or optical conditions, as well as other chronic diseases which can be detected through these regular visits.”
Read the entire article—we’d love to hear what you think.
I’m surprised Dental and Vision medical benefits are not part of every employee medical package for the very reasons Mr. Lowe points out here. Until we start treating health and the body as the complete and complex unit it is we will never get ahead of disease, and therefore cost.
It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that vision and dental benefits reduce cost to the system. First, it has been proven that preventative care costs more across the board than treating disease. Second, you can’t spread risk across routine care, so benefit administrators become another middle-man trying to make profit from the transaction between healthcare provider and patient. A sophisticated way to extract that profit, indeed, by dressing up your vision “benefits” to look like insurance–it all just adds cost to the system.
It doesn’t make a bit of sense, and shame on those docs who aren’t willing to do their own marketing. Vision Plans are the most expensive marketing you will ever do.