Marketwatch: Pooled purchasing: who are the players?

ABSTRACT: Data from the 1997 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Employer Health Insurance Survey provide the first national estimates of the prevalence of pooled purchasing under all major arrangements. About one-quarter of all businesses participate in a pool; smaller businesses are more likely to participate, and there is substantial geographic variation in the prevalence of pool participation. Pooling appears to have modest positive effects on the availability of employee choice among plans (especially health maintenance organizations) and on the availability of information about plan quality. On the other hand, pooling as now construed does not seem to have enhanced the accessibility or affordability of insurance to employers.