BIP Summer 2024

Healthcare is Local

Local health plan bolsters TX community Josh Butler of Butler Benefits in Amarillo, Texas, is tackling the problem of escalating healthcare costs with an innovative and community-based approach: direct contracting with health care providers. The High Plains Health Plan was built from the ground up via local direct relationships between businesses with 25 employees or more and numerous healthcare providers. “We negotiate good, fair contracts between self-funded health plans, our clients, plan sponsors, and care providers in our community,” says Butler. “We don’t rely on insurance companies wholly to negotiate our payments. It significantly reduces the unit cost of healthcare. We take that generated savings and pour it back into our plan designs.” While many plans are raising deductibles to get premium relief, Butler’s firm is going in the opposite direction and offering zero-dollar deductibles and zero-dollar copays. “We’re building health plans predicated on direct contracting,” he says. “And it is reducing organizational healthcare costs an average of 22%.”

The High Plains

Health Plan is reducing organizational healthcare costs costs by an average of 22%.