Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Minding Your Business With Andy Serwer
Aired January 24, 2003 - 07:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN KARL COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: A major victory for consumer groups in California, the nation's largest HMO provider has been ordered to make public those financial incentives it offers doctors in some cases for treating you less.
For all of that and a market preview, we have Andy Serwer here Minding Your Business.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning, Jonathan.
We want to talk about stocks. Yesterday, we had a major rally -- I'm saying that for Paula Zahn's benefit, because stocks were up. The Dow was up 50 points yesterday.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Anything over 50 points (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a rally.
SERWER: Anything over 50 is a major rally. Listen, in this market, we do. It breaks a string of down for five days. We've got a very negative. Very quickly, we're down five days and up one. AT&T actually was to the downside big time. A lot of people own that in the 401(k)s. In the upside, tech stocks, including amazon.com posting its second quarterly profit ever. That business is for real.
Let's talk about this HMO story, Jonathan.
KARL: Yes.
SERWER: It's very interesting to me. Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest HMO, is going to be posting on its Web site very, very soon the guidelines and the incentives that it pays its doctors and its employees at its call centers. Why is this important? Let's talk about this a little bit.
It reveals doctors' pay incentives. In other words, doctors in some cases have been paid more to treat you less. That's the big point here. In other words, if they would do a less costly procedure, they might get paid more. Call centers, same kind of deal, we'll get to that in a second. Reveal treatment guidelines. In other words, if you go to Kaiser Permanente and have glaucoma, what do they do? What are the steps that they follow?
The call center stuff to me, though was really amazing, getting into this a little bit. There were charges that at the call centers, people were getting bonuses to serve you less. In other words, you get a 10 percent bonus to make appointments for 35 percent or fewer callers. If you transferred fewer than 50 percent of calls to nurses, you also got a bonus.
Now, these are charges, apparently these practices ended in 2001, but you've got to believe that this stuff is going on in other HMOs. And what's really important here is that medicine is a closed economic system. You can't go to one doctor and say, hey, how much will you treat me for high blood pressure and then shop it to somewhere else.
So, I've got to give this a getting warmer here, because for the first time you're really going to see this is how much it costs to get this procedure, then you can go to another HMO, another doctor. We're really beginning to see how much things cost in the system. And that's important to consumers, I think.
KARL: It (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in there and give the consumer a little knowledge, and the question is, is there really going to be a choice?
(CROSSTALK)
SERWER: Yes, right. I mean, of course, it's a real hassle to go from one HMO to another. But it starts to rip the cover off this thing, which I think is really good.
ZAHN: Did anybody die because a call was transferred unnecessarily?
SERWER: Well, we don't know. That's a great question. I'm sure there are lawsuits about that. But nothing popped up right from the top.
ZAHN: Thanks, Andy.
SERWER: OK.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired January 24, 2003 - 07:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN KARL COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: A major victory for consumer groups in California, the nation's largest HMO provider has been ordered to make public those financial incentives it offers doctors in some cases for treating you less.
For all of that and a market preview, we have Andy Serwer here Minding Your Business.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning, Jonathan.
We want to talk about stocks. Yesterday, we had a major rally -- I'm saying that for Paula Zahn's benefit, because stocks were up. The Dow was up 50 points yesterday.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Anything over 50 points (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a rally.
SERWER: Anything over 50 is a major rally. Listen, in this market, we do. It breaks a string of down for five days. We've got a very negative. Very quickly, we're down five days and up one. AT&T actually was to the downside big time. A lot of people own that in the 401(k)s. In the upside, tech stocks, including amazon.com posting its second quarterly profit ever. That business is for real.
Let's talk about this HMO story, Jonathan.
KARL: Yes.
SERWER: It's very interesting to me. Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest HMO, is going to be posting on its Web site very, very soon the guidelines and the incentives that it pays its doctors and its employees at its call centers. Why is this important? Let's talk about this a little bit.
It reveals doctors' pay incentives. In other words, doctors in some cases have been paid more to treat you less. That's the big point here. In other words, if they would do a less costly procedure, they might get paid more. Call centers, same kind of deal, we'll get to that in a second. Reveal treatment guidelines. In other words, if you go to Kaiser Permanente and have glaucoma, what do they do? What are the steps that they follow?
The call center stuff to me, though was really amazing, getting into this a little bit. There were charges that at the call centers, people were getting bonuses to serve you less. In other words, you get a 10 percent bonus to make appointments for 35 percent or fewer callers. If you transferred fewer than 50 percent of calls to nurses, you also got a bonus.
Now, these are charges, apparently these practices ended in 2001, but you've got to believe that this stuff is going on in other HMOs. And what's really important here is that medicine is a closed economic system. You can't go to one doctor and say, hey, how much will you treat me for high blood pressure and then shop it to somewhere else.
So, I've got to give this a getting warmer here, because for the first time you're really going to see this is how much it costs to get this procedure, then you can go to another HMO, another doctor. We're really beginning to see how much things cost in the system. And that's important to consumers, I think.
KARL: It (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in there and give the consumer a little knowledge, and the question is, is there really going to be a choice?
(CROSSTALK)
SERWER: Yes, right. I mean, of course, it's a real hassle to go from one HMO to another. But it starts to rip the cover off this thing, which I think is really good.
ZAHN: Did anybody die because a call was transferred unnecessarily?
SERWER: Well, we don't know. That's a great question. I'm sure there are lawsuits about that. But nothing popped up right from the top.
ZAHN: Thanks, Andy.
SERWER: OK.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
